PEOPLE'S WILL

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 36, 12 February 1940, Page 6

PEOPLE'S WILL

AIM OF DEMOCRACY

NEED FOR LOYALTY

TALK BY MR. SAVAGE

"If the people are not loyal to themselves, how can government of the people by the people be anything but a farce?" asked the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage) in another of his series of talks last night, when he discussed the merits of democracy as against dictatorship. He said that in New Zealand the Government was using every means to carry out the will of the people, and emphasised that it was employing the machinery of justice in order to defeat all would-be saboteurs, with what, thoroughness the public would soon be able to judge. After repeating his previous statement that the immediate need was for soldiers, men who would fight on land, sea, and in the air, Mr. Savage said that that need would remain the first and the greatest as long as the war continued. It would be met only by young men pressing forward for service in their hundreds —their thousands—all the time, without any let-up, pause, or stop. That need could certainly not be met if young men capable of bearing arms declined to take them up because they would not separate themselves even for a time from high wages, safety, and pleasure. "But that will never be the picture of young New Zealand," said the Prime Minister. "I feel confident of that. "I have said that it is my earnest wish and hope that every New Zealand soldier will be a volunteer, compelled to serve only by his own conscience. I say that again, and without misgiving, for I believe in the young manhood of this country. New Zealanders will never let New Zealanders down; and those who go forth to war can know that behind them all the time reserves are forming, ready to relieve them when relief is needed. "Sacrifice will not be restricted to service in the field. It will extend to the whole of our civil life. It will affect the work, the leisure, the form of recreation, the luxuries, and even the necessaries of us all—and so it ought. There will be need also to draw without reserve on moral and spiritual resources—our courage, our resolution, our faith; shall we be able to stand the strain? Yes, I believe we shall, but only by the sternest exercise of self-discipline. "It is that word self-discipline that brings me to the heart of my subject. In the opinion of the dictators, democracies are incapable of imposing on themselves the discipline that a life-, and-death struggle demands. In their! view democracies are incurably self-1 indulgent, lazy, and cowardly. They believe that the people, left to them- j selves, are incapable of continuous, and sustained sacrifice and that without the heavy hand of the master, national achievement on any great or heroic scale is impossible. WHERE DEMOCRACY FAILED. "Remembering our past, I know this point of view to be utterly wrong. Yet I am compelled to remember that it is widely held; and that it is one of the reasons that explain why, in certain countries of the world, liberal and representative Constitutions have been j thrown away by peoples who' once, struggled for them and with high hopes set them up. Democracy collapsed in these countries because people lost faith in it. Why had they lost faith? Largely because of the aimlessness and weakness in the conduct of public affairs, the slackness and selfishness in the discharge of public duties which their democracy did little or nothing to correct. "I have no love for methods of repression or coercion in Government. But I have still less love for anarchy. If any person or body of persons defies the law, either directly by openly breaking it, or indirectly by refusing to carry out bargains made under it, a self-respecting Government has only one course open to it—to enforce th? law. "To render the law inoperative or ineffectual by the employment of methods that are tricky and underhand is to stab democracy in the back, because it brings the law, and with it the process of law-making, into disrepute. The workman who deliberately 'goes slow,' the person who in any way whatever holds up production, the trader who contrives the faking of invoices in order to,beat the law that is designed to stabilise prices, the man, whatever his occupation, trade, or calling, who says in the hour of his country's peril, 'War is a fool's business and I wash my hands of it'—each of these is an enemy of democracy. If the people are not loyal to themselves, how can government of the people by the people be anything but a farce? "Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government to work successfully. It doesn't function automatically, and it isn't foolproof. It cannot be successfully worked by a people of low mentality. It thrives only in an atmosphere of responsibility. Apathy and indifference, if widespread, are fatal to it. If the mass of the people have grown soft and self-indulgent with easy living; if they have lost the capacity to see, and the nerve to face, external dangers, they are no longer a democracy, but have become a mob, ripe for the retribution that awaits incompetence, selfishness, and cowardice. KEYSTONE OF THE ARCH. "In a democracy, the supremacy of a Parliament freely chosen by the people is fhe keystone of the arch. The laws made and the resolutions passed by such a Parliament are the will of the people, and when these are either overridden or undermined by disaffection the authority of the people itself as maker of the law is threatened. Let that happen a few times only, and the sovereignty of the people is gone. The stage is set for the dictator. Dictatorship is a product of societyit is not peculiar to any particular country or race. "It is the duty of Government to give effect to the policy which Parliament has approved, as it has, for example, in New Zealand approved participation with Britain and her Allies in the prosecution of this war. If it cannot or will not do that, it is not worthy of the name of Government; and has only itself to blame if power passes into stronger and more resolute hands. Because it is tolerant, and believes in the farthest extensions of freedom consistent with national safety; because it draws its vitality from the springs of understanding and consent and abhors the use of force, the Government of a democracy is not for that reason condemoed to impotence in the face of resistence, whether active or passive, to the people's will. There is nothing in the nature of democracy that obliges it to

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