POWER OF DICTATORS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21470, 19 April 1933, Page 9

POWER OF DICTATORS

GROWTH IN AMERICA DOMINATION BY PRESIDENTS [from ouit own-correspondent] BUENOS AIRES, March 16 Domination by Presidents, leading eventually to dictatorship, either civil or military, in which the State loses touch with tho people, is the chief contributing factor to tho unrest prevailing in South America, according to M. Audro Siegfried, the distinguished ' French writer, after a tour of tho Americas, north and south.. He remarks that ho noticed in the United States, Mexico and Central America the same tendency to magnify unduly the powers of the President, with tho reservation that, at Washington, a reasonable check is provided in tho Senate. Dictators have felt that, to be successful, they must suppress freedom of speech by means of a powerful army and police; that they must - dispense patronage widely, in order to. diversify control, and to squander public money. The existence of autonomy is rendered precarious by frequent seizure of control in States or provinces. As a result there is no independence; 110 parties, leaders of organisation; no middle class as it is known elsewhere; and no public opinion, as no one seems responsible for tho general welfare. As to the working classes, the task of organisation, outside the cities, is impracticable, owing to vast distances, poor communications and tho heterogeneous racial amalgam, ramifying outward from the white worker on tho clock to the guaclio on the pampa, to the Indian peon, who is practically inarticulate. Yet, M. Siegfried finds democracy turning, not to communism, but to radicalism. Throughout the masses there is a grudge against the power and status of the European. If tho Indian achieves social cohesion, ho may become dangerous, not by direct action, but by refusing to co-operate, after the manner of Gandhi. "One receives the impression'of. a society, still only partly aroused, with a remarkably refined aristocracy, but lacking the indispensable framework to provide a truly national culture," ho says in summing up. "A definite culture does exist, Spanish by tradition and French by the education of its intellectuals; but this is foreign in origin when it should be rooted into the soil of South America itself. Under the cir-' cumstances, tho fundamental problem is tho creation of an indigenous culture, of which the leading South Americans feel the need. It will bo an immense task, but they hope it may be realised within the coming century."