DEMOCRACY’S TRIAL

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 92, 12 January 1935, Page 19

DEMOCRACY’S TRIAL

Combining Advantages of Dictatorship “Crisis Government,” by Lindsay Rogers, Professor of Public Law, Columbia University. (London: Allen and Unwin). The great German philosopher Hegel in one of his rare moments of cynicism once said that the only lesson of history is that men'learn nothing from history. To those who have watched political movements in post-war years and seen the emergence of a crop of dictators in Europe this must have seemed at times perilously near the truth. Tyranny, to the ancient Greek political philosophers, was the lowest form of Government and they meant by tyranny very much what we mean to-day by dictatorship. it issued inevitably from democracy, they said, and even allowing that democracy as they knew it was very different from modern parliamentary democracy with its representative institutions. post-war years have proved again that disordered democracy does issue inevitably in dictatorship. _ Paradoxically enough the immediate influence of the great war seemed to belie this. The war was. President Woodrow Wilson said, fought to make the world safe for democracy. And it was a conflict which smashed the Hapsburg. Hohenzollern and Romanov dynasties, but left surviving, although perhaps not. unscatched, the democratic political systems of France, England, and the United States. Yet the long term effect has been such that, could Woodrow Wilson look out on the world to-day, his earlier phrase would surely return and smite him with a peculiar irony. Democracy is under a cloud and the number of those, including former friends, who repeat the parrot cry that it has failed, has been an increasing one. But a fact which emerges from a survey of the world in 1934 is that nowhere where genuine democracy has been tried has it failed, or, it may be ventured, is it in danger of failing. This is the thesis maintained by Professor Rogers, in this book. Democratic institutions, he shows, withered in those parts of Europe where they were tender plants. Where they were more firmly established they have stood the test of the crisis. For this reason those who have been expecting France and the United States to "go Fascist” have so far been disappointed. Democratic government has preserved itself by its own adaptability ;by giving to a cabinet or a president strong executive powers. Instead of indicating a bankruptcy of representative government, Professor Rogers says that “the readiness of a parliament to admit that it is virile and intelligent rather than vacillating and incompetent.” A strong executive In such st ease demonstrates that it is possible to have all the advantages of dictatorship without abandoning democracy. The electorate in due course will have an opportunity of saying whether or not it is satisfied with what MacDonald and Roosevelt have done, and if it wishes, of handing the task on to someone else. This is something Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin, despite their claims to popular support, cannot risk. Their achievements have not 'been so great that they can be put to the free and unfettered test of public opinion. General Jan Smuts has said that “Bolshevism and Fascism, which are the current alternatives to democratic liberty, may be defended as a way out of intolerable situations, but they are temporary expedients often tried and discarded before and they will be discarded after present trials.” That is the lesson of history. WORLD OF THE SICK A Record of Spiritual Experience “Silent Hours,” by Robert de Traz (translated by Dorothy M. Richardson). (London: Bell.) The keynote of this distinctly unusual book may be found in the author’s own summing-up: “The healthy have much to learn from the sick, and perhaps, like them, are in need of healing.” “Silent Hours” is a record of the author’s mental, spiritual and emotional experiences among the inmates of a sanatorium high up in the Swiss mountains. These people are knit together by the common calamity of tuberculosis, but no greater mistake could be made than to generalise with regard to their reactions to the disease, rhe surroundings or to the, at least temporarily forbidden life of the plain below.

M. do Traz enters through his experiences into a new and unimagined world —a region difficult, in part impossible, to define in words, it nature being so essentially different from that of the world about which we are accustomed to converse. The sense of this spiritual region remains with them through scenes of agony, sorrow, joy. resignation, hope and rebellion. He feels himself, in his sympathetic and often despairing intercourse with these people, in contact with something beyond the knowledge of (he ordinary world of health and bustle.

The book suggests strange avenues of thought. . It particularly merits the attention of the absolutely healthy who see in disease nothing but repulsive ami unmitigated calamity Sadness, terror and the nearness of death are present all through the book, but the thing that remains, transcends all —a faint glimmering of infinity in which man may lose himself BOOKS IN DEMAND The Chief Librarian of the Wellington Public Libraries has furnished the following list of books in demand:— GENERAL. “'J’lie End of our Time,” by N. A, Berdyeav. 'Mon Repos," by N. Bevel. "Gordon at Khartoum ” by John Buchan. “Money,” by E. Cannan. ‘Kings in the Making.” bv E. T. Cook. 'Orthodoxy Sees it Through.” by S. Dark. ed. FICTION. "Sherpherdess of Sheep.” by N. Strentfield. “The Gold of Alamito,” by O. IL Snow. ‘The Boat of the Sun.” by K. Rhodes. "Shot ut Night.” by T A. Plummer. "The Rock in the Sea.” by .1. Delmonte. "'l'lie Three Blue Anchors,” by Ottwell Binns.