REVIVIFYING DEMOCRACY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23702, 9 January 1939, Page 8

REVIVIFYING DEMOCRACY

There is a dangerous degree of political ignorance and apathy in Britain to-day; what can we do about it? asks Mr S. C. Leslie, writing in the Spectator. Before long, under pressure of foreign trade competition and our own rearniament, we shall adopt a far greater measure of economic centralisation. Will this new machine remain an instrument of defence in a free people’s hands, or shall we find it a Fascist Frankenstein’s monster? Of vyhat can we inform ourselves, or remind, ourselves, to combat that creeping paralysis of the will that seems to afflict us? I have never seen this question answered more concisely than by Thomas Mann in an essay, “ The Coming Victory of Democracy,” which is an American 'best-seller, though as yet too little known here. “ What seems to me necessary,” he writes, “ is that democracy should answer this Fascist strategy (its propaganda of the effeteness of democracy) with a rediscovery of itself, which can give it the same charm of novelty. ... It should put aside the habit of taking itself for granted, of self-forgetfulness. It should use this wholly unexpected situation—-the fact, namely, that it has again become problematical—to renew and rejuvenate itself by again becoming aware of itself.”