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Hokitika Guardian, 25 October 1933, Page 4

laud, Belgium and other countries which stood upon a liberal and democratic basis, were confronted with the growth of systems that had nothing in common with theirs; systems based upon uncontrolled violence and the overriding of private individual rights by the supposedly superior rights of a State controlled by an armed minority. This principle challenged the whole of thejr political and philosophic outlook. He did not say that the Declaration of the Right- of Man or the American Declaration of Independence were sacred documents, of which not one jot or tittle should he touched. But they constituted landmarks in the progress of civilised humanity which they could not suffer to ho swept aside by any new-fangled doctrine of viojence, It was a standing wonder to him that sr-called Conservatives in Britain, in the United States, and in France should welcome the' enthronement of those systems embodying violence as a guarantee of property and stability, without recognising that in welcoming this doctrine they were giving a certificate of legality to any violence that might be exercised by revolutionaries should they one day get power into their hands. “We see in Germany the negation of Christ and the affirmation of Odin. I could but wish that there should have been concerted ■declarations that the Governments that stand for liberty as we have understood, it and as our fathers understood it give due notice that those who trample liberty underfoot cannot expect our goodwill. We stand to-dav at the carting of the ways as regards the defence and development of the verv basis of the civilisation of the United States. .France, this country and the Western civilisation. Without the firm defence and successful vindication of those principles we have no prosperous future to hope for.”

The significance of the Hitler regime for the rest of the world was dealt with by Mr H. Wickham Steed in a recent speech in London. He said he sometimes thought that they were on the eve of, if not in the midst of, the greatest md deepest crisis in the history of Western civilisation since the French revolution of 1789. The United States of America, France, Switzer-