FREE ELECTIONS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 252, 21 September 1940, Page 8

FREE ELECTIONS

BULWARK OF DEMOCRACY

MR ROOSEVELT’S WARNING

(United Press Association —Copyright.) Received September 21, 1.55 p in. PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 20. “I regret to say that even to-day there are demands for a return of the Government to the control of those few who, because of their business ability or economic omniscience, are supposed to be just a touch above the average of our citizens,” said President Roosevelt in a speech. “The great danger is that once the Government falls into the hands of a few of the elite the curtailment, or even t'he abolition, of free elections might be adopted as a means of keeping them in power. Free elections mean the enduring safety of our form of government. No dictator in history has dared to run the gauntlet of a really free election.”

Mr Roosevelt said the Germans bad despaired of their Democracy and listened to the new .cult of Nazism in which a minority had offered “bread, shelter, and better government” by the rule of a handful of people who had special aptitude for government, but making no mention of the abolition of free elections. Many people in large businesses, dissatisfied .with the democratic svstem, had formed political and economic alliances with this group. “You and I know the subsequent history,” Mr Roosevelt added. “Germany’s right to free elections wa.s suddenly wiped out by the new regime.”