THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, June 14, 1941. DEMOCRACY’S PLEDGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24633, 14 June 1941, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, June 14, 1941. DEMOCRACY’S PLEDGE

To-day almost the whole continent of Europe is under a tyranny comparable in ferocity with any which has darkened the pages of history. This regime of bloodshed, subjection and mis-rule is described by its leaders as a “new order” —an order imposed by force, to be maintained with' bludgeons, for the greater glorification of dictators and the Nazi doctrine of German race superiority. While Europe groans, subject and next to helpless, under this iniquitous system, a few miles away a group of free men have met and pledged themselves, and the peoples for whom they stand, to release the world from thrall. This is the significance of the international gathering in London on Thursday in the Palace of St. James’s. Present were spokesmen both for the countries in subjection to Nazi-ism, and those other countries which Hitler is attempting to conquer and enslave —the Dominion of New Zealand among them. Their meeting was lacking neither in drama nor inspiration. It emphasised the determination of the free peoples of the world to fight on to the death of Hitlerism, and to rebuild broken Europe upon a basis of respects for the rights and the needs of man. That, plainly stated, was the sum of the resolution carried by the council; those are its aims of war and peace. The British Prime Minister, Mr Churchill, in his restrained yet passionate address, sounded the keynote of the assembly when he voiced the contempt and anger of civilised men at the outrages Naziism has committed upon weak European nations. and affirmed that there can be no peace in the world until the proponents of this creed have been “blasted from the face of the earth.” This is the choice of democracy, made by the people who remain free to choose—and sufficiently strong to obtain what they will. Those gathered in St. James’s Palace spoke for perhaps a quarter of the world’s population; they can count upon the support, spiritual and material, of Hundreds of millions of free men besides, and of men and women whose liberty is temporarily lost to them. The reserves of this democratic world are greater than the resources that can be marshalled against it; and this meeting, called in the heart of war-torn London, unconquered outpost of Europe, is witness that the will and spirit of the democratic peoples are likewise strong beyond the most desperate challenge.