“BEST TO HAVE MEN SOLID AND VIOLENT ”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18009, 20 November 1926, Page 8

“BEST TO HAVE MEN SOLID AND VIOLENT ”

BILLY HUGHES STANDS UP FOR DEMOCRACY. HE WAS RIGHT BACK TO OLD FIGHTING FORM. (Special to the “ Star.”) SYDNEY, November 10. With smashing blow after blow of his hand on the back of his chair, Hughes, M.H.R., told a crowded * audience at the » Congregational Hall, Killara, last *l* night, that democracy had not proved a failure. Mr Hughes was in great form. With great speed he jumped through papers of history from Caesar, Caligula and Nero to Cromwell and the Stuarts, right up to the present. The stun and substance of Mr Hughes’s exposition was that democracy had many defects, but was not a failure. Bather was it a success. The best way to improve the position, he said, was to concentrate on. to govern and to deal with causes of dissatisfaction, remedying them wherever possible. BETTER OFF THAN BARON. The working man of to-day, said Mr Hughes, was better off in many ways than the baron of King John's time. If a man was to be a law-abiding citizen, strong of body and sane of judgment, he must not be reared in a crowded house. The test of good government must be applied to the conditions that the great majority of the people enjoyed. “ When men speak of the failure of democracy,” exclaimed Mr Hughes, “ what they often mean is that civilisation has failed, and in a measure it has. “ What was the alternative to democracy?” he asked. “There were no experiments which had not been tried. There was the rule of Mussolini, Caesar, Bonaparte, Lenin, Trotsky and the Council of Ten. Every form of rule from autocracy to democracy had been tried. Benevolent autocracy was perhaps the best form of government, but if one were to rule he must be wise and just. Many autocrats had been tyrants. For every good autocrat there had been ten bad ones. REFORM THE INDIVIDUAL. “ If you are going to have a wise and prudent democracy,” cried Mr Hughes, “you must reform the individual. Laws are like patching up old barns. “Many men condemned democracy because it has been responsible for the Labour Party, ‘go slow’ and Bolshevism. In a way that is true, but if all men were slaves there would be no strikes. But there would be death and desolation in our midst. “It is better to have men solid, strong and violent, saying that they want to do this and that, than to go back to the days when society was divided into two camps. “The people of Australia are sane and .well balanced, and in this country the task of democracy is easy compared with that of America, with its mixed nationalities.”