Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 10 November 1939, Page 4

Timely Topics

t A correspondent of “The Times,” • discussing Germany and her rulers, isays: “In 1918 general popular disgust t overthrew themili-

| GERMANY AND f HER RULERS.

tarists, and the moi'e peaceably and

reasonably minded elements came momentarily to the top. “The great mistake on our side was that we did not give those Elements | the support and encouragement we | should have done. The result was i another reversal in 1933, by which f elements much more brutal and ruthI less than the militarists of the HohI enzollern regime came into power. | “But the better elements are there, i suppressed and gagged. Probably a t large part of the German people today ? hates the Hitler regime. And if, after i this war, we are to have a stable ? condition of things in Europe, it can ? only be by our freeing those elements I from the present tyranny and enl abling them once more to take conI trol. T “If we censure them today for not I being brave enough to come out into f active opposition, it is fair to remem- | ber that, with modern scientific | means of destruction, detection, and f communication, a gang which has -1 once possessed itself of the central • Government and has a sufficient body |of police can crush ppposition be- • fore it can organise. Perhaps they i are not heroes, the many decent- ? minded Germans; but I do not know | which of us would be a hero if it • might mean, as it may today in Gert many, undergoing actual torture at the hands of bestial ruffians.”

Speaking at the Liberal Summer School at Cambridge, Dr. Eduard Benesh, former President of Czecho-

DEMOCRACIES LACK COURAGE.

Slovakia, spoke of democracies’ lack of courage.

He said: “One must have a right conception of democracy as theory, and one must have the courage to put these theories into practice rightly, justly and courageously.” Dictators, adventurers, occasional politicians, and many of -.those who considered themselves political geniuses, belonged frequently to a category of people who were intuitive, imaginative, romantic, emotional, personally ambitious, and very often they finished by being brutal, cynical, and as completely amoral as animals. Dr. Benesh, analysing the background of “A Duce and a Fuehrer,” said: ‘They have a mystical conception of the people and of the nation.» They deify the nation, they.deify the State, they identify the State and the nation, and a Duce and Fuehrer are the natural leaders, as expressions of the nation and of the all-mighty State as opposed to parties, classes, and individuals. The only origin of these leaders is through revolution.” Dr. Benesh said that leaders in authoritarian States —because they were based on the idea that life was a battle, that the relations between nations and States were a battle, because the;* accepted in daily politics methods of violence and force—must reflect such characteristics. They must be men who accepted the principle that human life .was a constant / battle and jthat the relation of men, nations, and States, was a relation of force. They were generally people who mode decisions at once without taking into consideration the advice of others and without taking into consideration the historical facts and different realities. “For this reason, always in the past, their countries, because of. the very nature of their regime, finished, in catastrophe, generally in war and revolution,” added Dr. Benesh. “The judgment of history has already condemned the dictatorial system of government and it has also condemned its leaders. The events of the next years in Europe, and in the world, will show to the present generation if this judgment of history was right. My scientific conviction is that this judgment was right.”