This Democracy

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 31, 6 February 1937, Page 4

This Democracy

(To tho Editor.) Sir, —Reading the report of last Sunday evening’s meeting in tho Opera House I observed, with satisfaction, that all the speakers from tho Mayor who opened the proceedings to Mr Colquhoun who closed them, had a kindly word to say for democracy. Some of the speakers made it clear that in their opinion the most effective way at the moment to preserve democracy would be to send assistance to General (Jabcllero and tho Russian soldiers w r ho are lighting with him to secure a victory for communism. Other speakers, equally enthusiastic in the cause of democracy, wilted at this proposal. All wore ardent democrats but where and what was democracy! I thought of the lines of a poet in a similar dilemma. ‘‘God bless the King our noble faith's defender. God bless —no harm in blessing—the pretender. But which is the pretender, which is King. God bless us all. That’s quite another thing.” Is Stalin a democrat and is Russian communism democratic! A straw often shows how the wind blows. Btalin is popular with the acceptance houses in London, He borrows from them and pays them a higher rate of interest than they can get in any capitalist country in Europe, 'lilie interest is there on tho day that it is due. His “credit is good” on tho London market. Ho has fathered the Franco-Boviet pact and is thereby committed to the support of a capitalist State for France is still capitalist though the Government of the moment is socialist. Mussolifli who is not a democrat and who proclaims that democracy is a failure, has taken the whole privilege of issuing credit money out of private hands. It is now a Government monopoly. The banker there can exercise no sort of control of the price-level. The possibility of a profit from war has been destroyed. Interest rates have boon reducod almost to vanishing point. Mussolini is not popular with the big financiers in London. Giles Robles who Ihould know, says: “Spain is witnessing the murder of democracy at the hands of Caballero,’' yet Mussolini is not a democrat and we are told that Btalin and Caballero are. Which is the pretender; which is King.-Ll am, etc., JAMES F. MACMANUS.