Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 30 January 1939, Page 6

Timely Topics

Despite the apparent ovations of their following, the lives of the dictators are as constantly threatened as ■ those of autocratic

.DANGER FOR ; DICTATORS .

tsars, thus • causing them to have phobias

\ quite similar to psychopathies, writes Joseph Jastrow, [noted psychologist, in the American I “Current History.” Stalin leaves the in a cavalc'ade of three fasti moving cars'. He lives in a guarded [country house surrounded by high [walls. Mussolini’s cars have one-way [glass so that he can see but not be [seen. Hitler has a bomb-proof cellar under his closely gu'arded mountain retreat, with a charged barbed wire enclosing the estate. The strongest men and, according to their followers, the most adored men in Europe are in constant fear for their lives, which hardly adds to the sanity of their state of mind. The dictator’s following is recruited 'among a population in despair, and is reinforced by propaganda. Once under way, the dictator imposes his will upon the by ruthless compulsion and the silencing of opposition. Dictatorship and freedom, no more than sanity and insanity, dan live under the same roof.

93 ® Si S j In reply to the point that a British Ministry of Supply would mean great interference with British trade- and commerce, and would

TRADE WHILE REARMING.

cripple the export trade. Sir Archibald Sinclair said in a re-

cent House of Commons debate: “My 'answer to that would be twofold. First, Germany can do it, although she is making a far greater armament effort at the present moment than would be necessary in our case; for she has to supply an enormous Continental army. She has to. face the problem of providing artillery and shells for a Continental army on a vast scale. In spite of that, She is increasing her export trade at the present time.

“Secondly, my answer is 'this. It would not be due to thd Ministry if interference took place with our export trade! The Ministry would be largely manned and staffed by .men experienced in business and industry, who would be alive to the necessities of our trade and commerce, and would be sensitively anxious not to interfere with it more than was necessary. If there -was interference, it would be because We could hot get adequate defence without sjome interference with trade.

“Although 1 am afraid not all the doctrines of Adam Smith are as popular, although they are all as sound, as they once were, 1 1 believe that the people of this country believe with him that ‘Defence is more than opu- • • - lence’.” T .