The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1934. DEMOCRACY SAFE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20232, 16 February 1934, Page 6

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. Gloucester Street and Cathedral Square CHRISTCHURCH NEW ZEALAND. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1934. DEMOCRACY SAFE.

/""TJ.RAVE though the position is, fear can too easily tend to blacken and exaggerate the spectacle, in Europe. Austria, France and Spain are almost split asunder by violent upheavals, and many leading English churchmen, > politicians, scientists and. publicists profess to see a possible spread of the passion and intimidation in political thought to Great Britain. Democracy, they say, is at stake. Similar obsessions have obtained before, notably at the time of the French Revolution, when prominent Englishmen had visions of mobs yelling for blood in the streets of London and a guillotine set up in Whitehall. It is as well to reflect, however, that instead of being old and decrepit, democracy throughout many parts of Europe is still in its swaddling clothes, and that for millions the days of cowering oppression under tyrannical monarchy are not long past. Of selfgovernment they know little, and hence movements by this nation and that towards revolt or dictatorship, but as Macaulay wrote: “ There is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired freedom produces—and that cure is freedom. In a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. ... At length a system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos.” WHY RELIEF FAILS. 1 1 ELIEF MEASURES in New Zealand must leave loopholes for criticism and distrust while serious lack of co-ordination continues to exist between the Unemployment Board and citizens’ unemployment committees. The latest instance is a remarkable one. After much discussion and a good deal of conjecture and doubt as to the board’s possible attitude, the Christchurch committee recently forwarded to the Unemployment Board a suggestion concerning the institution of full-time employment for relief workers. To the surprise of the committee, a reply came from Wellington this week to the effect that schemes similar to that suggested, carrying full-time employment at normal standard conditions, were already in operation at Auckland, Rotorua and Dunedin. The board, it appears, has not only been sponsoring this type of employment for several months, but has actually been paying a subsidy to the local bodies concerned. Now the Christchurch committee naturally wants to know why an important development in relief policy should be made public in one part of the Dominion and kept secret in another. TRADE COMES FIRST. TTOW ZEALOUSLY the British Government is fostering every possible means of trade expansion was made evident when Mr Ramsay MacDonald announced in the House of Commons that the £IOO,OOO received by the Soviet Government for the Codex Sinaiticus would be spent in Britain. The money would not be removed from the country, he added, but would be used to facilitate Russian purchases of British goods. This statement, very probably, is intended to allay the storm of indignation that arose in certain quarters because so much money could be found in Britain for a treasured relic when drastic economies were being enforced in important social services and poor relief. The Codex Sinaiticus is for bibliophiles a treasured possession, but many critics of its purchase held that it was a doubtful benefaction to scholarship to divert to its purposes money so desperately required for bare human needs. The Prime Minister has shown, however, that employment and trade will benefit and not suffer as a result of the purchase.