Liberty

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 92, 12 January 1935, Page 20

Liberty

What is it that distinguishes the two Eu ropes that confront us to-day from one another? All that is contained in the word “freedom.” That “ all” may not seem much. Those who live in free countries become used to freedom and. forgetting the effort and sacrifice of the dead generations, take it for granted or even deride it as an abstraction or as something old-fashioned. “The murdered Italian Socialist Mattootti once said that people do not appreciate freedom until they have lost it. Like the air we breathe, it leaves us almost unaware of its existence, but when once it is withdrawn we know quickly enough that it is gone, The Europe that is unfree has ceased to breathe; there is no flow and counterflow of healthy spirits; a gradual suffocation has set in, and only some violent convulsion or inner paroxysm and a striking-out to the right and left can avert the mental coma that is approaching.

“From the Rhine to the Urals there is a Europe made, up of lands that differ deeply from on another but are. alike in the one thing that matters most deeply of all; they are unfree; and, much as they differ,-this resemblance makes them fundamentally one. Europe from the Rhine to the Urals is one great prison. This is no metaphor ; an innumerable multitude that lives in this prison knows —‘better than any who live outside —that it is a prison and would give everything to get out but may not.” —The “Manchester Guardian.”