ART OF GOVERNMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 June 1938, Page 8

ART OF GOVERNMENT

DISCOVERIES BY HITLER AND MUSSOLINI. HISTORIAN’S OBSERVATIONS. Hitler and Mussolini are both men of genius, writes Mr J. L. Hammond, the historian, in the “Manchester Guardian." They have made some simple and important discoveries about the art of government. They have seen that, as Bishop Berkeley suggested, man is ruled rather by imitation than by reason. If they rule Europe, they will rule it as they rule Germany and Italy—by putting its mind into a prison. Now the life of the English mind is not a separate thing quite apart from the life of the mind of Europe; it lives and develops in the medium of this larger world. Does anybody think that if discussion is to talk only in whispers, if religion, scholarship, philosophy, letters, science and art are to take their orders from Governments England is not going to be impoverished? Nor would it be surprising if Hitler, astride the Continent, found himself in a strong position for persuading a British Government that our old-fashioned habits of free discussion were not worth the price of a quarrel with Europe’s master. The truth is that Europe could not have a worse master than a man who combines efficiency with intolerance. The Roman Empire gave Europe stability and peace, but tolerance was the secret of its power and virtue. In comparison with that enlightenment the rule offered to Europe today is the rule of tribal darkness. When Gibbon reflected on the danger of a second catastrophe like that of the fall of the Western Empire, he consoled himself by thinking that the gunpowder was in the hands of the civilised. It did not occur to him that one day it might be on the other side.