BULWARK OF DEMOCRACY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 9 April 1934, Page 10

BULWARK OF DEMOCRACY

“We sec that in different forms, by different methods and ways, every great State facing the economic and social troubles which are now realised to be an aftermath of the Great War is making an effort at national concentration,” said Sir John Simon in a London speech. “Indeed, you might go farther than Western Europe. The same tiling is true on the largest scale in the United States, where Americans have largely ceased to believe in their own judgment and perspicacity as to what is best to be done in a terribly complicated situation, and are putting their faitli in the magnetic leadership of a man. In Germany, in Italy—the situation is too confused to know whether I should add or should not add in Austria—the spirit of national concentration lias led to the elimination of opposing opinion and to the leadership of a single directing mind. In Britain and in France this same impulse to national unity has made itself intensely felt, and yet the method of attempting to attain it is different. We look across the Channel We watch with great sympathy the effort that is being made by M. Dolin’ argue and his distinguished colleagues to reconcile the practice of democratic government with a strong and unwavering action. At home we may take an honest pride in th e fact that here in our own land our country in its effort lo effect this concentration and reconciliation lias throughout determined to try to do it without any sacrifice of the sacred rights of individual liberty, without any curbing of the free press, without any restraint upon free expression of opinion, and I feel that the intelligent citizen of my own country who looks round the world to-day and then looks at the state of things in his own native land—llo doubt lie secs much that calls here for remedy and improvement, no doubt he may feel that the pace, is too slow and that effort is not wisely directed—lias some reason to thank the fortune that made him a citizen of his native land.”