BENES ON DICTATORS

Evening Star, Issue 23383, 28 September 1939, Page 16

BENES ON DICTATORS

WEAKNESSES OF DEMOCRACIES Dr Eduard Bcnes, former President of Czecho-Slovakia, recently addressed the Liberal Summer School at Cambridge. Mr Wickham Steed presided. ' Dr Benes said that very" severe criticism could and should be passed on the practice, procedure, means, and methods of the European democracies —the great old democracies as well as the smaller, newer democracies. Their lack of belief and faith in their own principles, their lack of civic courage, their inacceptable utilitarian opportunism as to principle, their ladk of real knowledge of concrete problems, showed that it was necessary not merely to oppose the principles of authoritarianism, to preach democracy, and to speak in highly laudatory terms about the freedom of man and nations. _ “ One must have also a right conception of demo cracy as a theory, and one must have the courage to put these theories into practice rightly, justly, and courageously.” A DUCE AND A FUHRER. Dictators, adventurers, occasional “politicians, and manv of those who considered themselves political geniuses belonged frequently to a category of people who were_ intuitive, imaginative, romantic, emotional, personally _ ambitious, and very often they finished by being brutal, cynical, and as completely amoral as animals. Dr Benes, analysing the background of “a Duce and a Fuhrer,” said. “They have a mystical conception of the people and of the nation. They deify the nation, they deify the State, they identify the State and the nation, and a Duce and a Fuhrer are the natural leaders as expressions of the nation and of the all-mighty State as opposed to parties, classes, and individuals. The only origin of these leaders is through revolution.” Dr Benes said that leaders in authoritarian States because they were based on the idea that life was a battle, that the relations between nations were a battle, because they accepted in daily politics methods of violence and force—must reflect such characteristics. They must be men who accepted the principle that human life was a constant battle and that the relation of men. nations, and States was a relation of force. They were generally people who made decisions at once without taking into consideration the advice of others and without taking into consideration historical facts and different realiti««. , "For this reason, always in the past, their countries, because of the very nature of their regipie, finished in catastrophe, generally in war and revolution,” added Dr Benes. “As a democrat I do not admit that the authoritarian system of government is justified because it is a travesty of government and nothing else. Because it is a travesty it cannot endure. I believe also that the leaders of authoritarian Governments can never be the real leaders of a human,‘universal, and Christian morality, of a real human education and erudition. The judgment of history has already condemned the dictatorial system of government and it has also condemned its leaders. The events of the next years in Europe, and in the world, will show to the present generation if this judgment of history was right. My scientific conviction is that this judg,»«4 ziokkJt