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Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1938, Page 10

“There are engines of death, as well as engines that serve the purposes of life,” said Mrs E. V. Parker, in her presidential address to the English National- Union of Teachers. “We are witnessing elsewhere the use of the educational machine to kill the human spirit and to enslave the human mind. It must continue to be our aim to make it an instrument of freedom. In England we still preserve, in large measure, our freedom of action. But as soon as we cease to support actively the principles of a free democracy, the blind worship of a Leader emerges from a barbaric past which is only thinly overlaid by modern civilisation. As soon as we cease to practise independent thought and judgment and to encourage these in our children, both we and they fall victims to the evils of dictatorship. Dictatorship on the large scale does not spring suddenly into existence. It develops from a multitude of petty dictatorships which democracy perilously allows to flourish in its midst.”