The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, JANUARY 14th, 1926. THREE DICTATORSHIPS.

Hokitika Guardian, 14 January 1926, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, JANUARY 14th, 1926. THREE DICTATORSHIPS.

Ox the 27th. October. 1922, after tlie Fascists had seized the government in many parts of Italy and made their dramatic march on Rome, their leadc*r, Signor [Mussolini, was invited by the King to form a Cahinet, and remai’ks the Wellington “l'ost, M under the title of I'rime Minister he has exercised a dictatorsldp ever since. Within a year Spain had followed the

lend of Italy. On the 12th. September, (leneral l’rimo lie Rivera. the Captain-General of Catalonia, .seized Barcelona, of which he was the military governor, and in the name oi the Army demanded of the King the dismissal of the Government. The Government replied with a request for the dismissal of the rebellious officer, and resigned when the advice was not taken. The King thereupon signed in favour of do Rivera what must surely !>o the most extraordinary document to which a constitutional monarch ever put his name : I. Alfonso XIII., etc. etc., Decree .... On Lieutenant-General Primo de Rivera, Marques do Kstella, is conferred the office of President of the Military Directory, charged with the government of the country, with power to lay before me such Decrees as public welfare may require. These Decrees shall have the force of law unless and until they he modified by laws approved by the Cortes and submitted for my Royal sanction. Other Decrees followed which abolished all portfolios except those for War and Foreign Affairs, dissolved Parliament, suspended the Spanish equivalent of the Habeas Corpus Act, and proclaimed a state of siege throughout Spain. In Italy the King, while bowing to superior force illegally exercised. bad at least observed the forms

of the constitution in making the dictator Prime Minister. In Spain the King had equally disregarded the form and the substance by creating a new office unknown to the constitution, and purporting to invest it with powers which he had no authority to grant. But neither in Snafu nor in Italy were the people any more dis--1 posed than the dictators or their involuntary accomplices to stick at trifles. Of Spain we were told that “every shade of public opinion was agreed upon one thing—that the Directorate could not bo worse than the Government of recent- years.” In both countries the people appear to lie still of the same mind, and while in

Italy the chief peril to the dictatorship arises from Mussolini’s ill-health, and in Spain the dictator’s yearning for normality do. not appear to have yet carried him very far. a third lias now been added to the list In a world which was supposed to have been made safe for democracy Pangalos takes his stand l>eside Mussolini and de Hirer* to show that the' old order is not dead, and that even for the settlement of their domestic problems force is still preferred to argument hv some of the Western nations. That all the three nations concerned are peninsular nations is an incidental point which invites speculation, though we cannot pretend, to see in it anything more thqn an interesting coincidence. -In pa?t ages the partial Isolation of a peninsula Has uften given it security

for the development of a civilisation and a culture of its own, but tyranny is .a plant that will grow in any .soil, and the 'dictatorships of Italy, Spain, and Greece seem to owe nothing to their geographical position. In Greece, which was one of the earliest cradles of liberty and democracy, the present reaction in favour of a military despotism causes little surprise. Even in the greatest days of ancient Greece good government on a national scale was not one of the virtues of its people. In their descendants who have been described as a “facile people, overimaginative, over-perceptive worshippers of rhetoric, prone to discard. and given to revenge” it has usually been conspicuously lacking. “Loss niinblencss of mind and more of slow and unattractive dourness” would, it is said, have enabled them to realise their national ambitions under the guidance of flic man who has been called the greatest of Greek statesmen since Pericles. The coarser methods of .Pangalos may at least enable him to enforce unity and order where the persuasions of Venizolos failed. Another reason why the new dictator’s coup fails to excite surprise is that lie had prepared the way for it a few months ago. The King had dropped out as long ago as the 25th. Alni-clf, 1921. when the Republic was proclaimed by an overwhelming vote of the Chamber, so that there were no such formalities in the way as those of which Victor Emmanuel and Alfonso had made so l'«;ht. The way in which General Pangalos brought the Miclialokopoulo.s regime to a close in dune last, showed that he had already got the measure of the President and the Parliament and the control of an instrument which they could not withstand. Trouble had been caused by the political activities of an organisation of military officers, hut the Government, was reconstituted and received a vote of confidence from the Chamber. As the Republican leader. General Pangalos thereupon published a bombastic statement in which he threatened the Government in the event of its venturing to discipline the offending officers and gave the Prime ten days’ notice to quit. On the niorninof the tenth day (20th. .Tune) Athens woke up to find troops in occupation of important positions in the city, and an ultimatum from the general and his friend. Admiral TTajikyriakcx threatened a honihardnient if the Government had not resigned by I p.m. So AI. Miehalokopnulos retired, and General Pangalos reigned in his stead. Nobody worried about it, nor is anybody likely to worry now, because the good man still finds Parliament and tlu i politicians a nuisance, and limits to consolidate his military rule on the sure foundation of “havonets onlv.”