AN AMERICAN VIEW.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 13, 8 October 1937, Page 4

AN AMERICAN VIEW.

" Toleration, except of religious faith, is not a fashionahle practice these days," states "Scrutator" in the Sunday Times. " Yet surely it is the very soul of democracy. Democratic forms of government, resting as they do on persuasion and eonsenfc, necessarily saerifice many qualities of rule that are valuable, notably promptaess and deciSiveness of action. Those who work them have to think not only of what is, but of what will appear to others to be, the better course; and the consent of the governed is sometimes only to be had by ineffeetual compromise. "Deihocraoy makes these saerifices because consent, though slower to begin, is the better stayer. But consent in any real sense is impossible without willingness to understand another point of view than our own, and if the general interest requires it, to make terms with it. Without tolerance democracy is the least efficient form of government and easily degenerates into a series of f action fights; with it democracy can be the most efficient, just because it gives the fullest opportunity to new and unconventional opinions to prove themselves righb — if they are right — and so keep the world moving."