TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19065, 2 October 1933, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

A Socialist Dictatorship.

“ If and when a Socialist Government is returned to power, a start is to be made by passing what is termed an Emergency Powers Act, under which a full-blooded revolutionary programme would be brought into immediate operation by means of a series of Ministerial orders,” writes Mr Stanley Baldwin in the News-Letter. “As this proposal is advocated in almost identical terms by several of the present Socialist leaders, it may be inferred that it is a considered policy.

“ The effect of such an emergency measure would be to put Parliament out of action. The Ministerial orders would be the edicts of the dictators. They would be issued, not to be discussed, but to be obeyed. They would be, to use an expressive colloquialism, the ‘ laying down of the law,’ with no argument about it. A disciplined people would be expected to. do Avhat it was told, and meanwhile the House of Commons ns a superfluous institution would doubtless be adjourned for a long reeess, while the Press and the 8.8. C. would presumably be muzzled on the model of the Continental autocracies.”

“ Fitness ” in Citizenship. “It is doubtful if in the future there will be available employment beyond what the ‘fit ’ can perform. Will there not, therefore, be less and less room in the world for the lmlf-fledged? The latter will become a dead weight on the community—their employment casual, their earnings scanty, their morale and character declining, and theiri children without fair chance to make good,” writes Lord Dawson of Penn, Physician-Extraordinary to the King. “ The community will be damaged by the deterioration of their citizenship, and impoverished by the cost of their maintenance. “Now it is not nature whose methods we try to displace, but ourselves who are responsible for these endeavours to save lives. Such endeavours are right, but surely they will bring not peace but a sword unless we study and face their implications and results. While giving them kindly thought and necessary care in their afflictions, should we not study how to protect the world from those who are incurably unfit, it may be in body, mind or conduct.” Is War Inevitable?

“To ask whether war is inevitable is about equivalent to asking whether suicide is inevitable. Although writers sometimes speak of war as we speak of storms and earthquakes, the difference is plain enough; man does not make the earthquake and lie does make war,” writes Sir Norman Angcll in “To-day and To-morrow.” “War is not the result of forces outside himself; budgets don't get voted, warships built, armies painfully drilled, poison gas invented. apart from the wills of men. Behind these efforts arc definite but fallacious ideas of defence —defence of possessions, of opportunities for wealth, of political independence, of views of right, and what not.

“Broadly, the fallacy arises from supposing that defence of such things can he based on the individual action of each; whereas the things necessary to civilisation can only be defended by the. common action of the community —the community of nations in the international field.”