DEMOCRACY’S WEAKNESS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1938, Page 14

DEMOCRACY’S WEAKNESS

CRITICISM ON THE CONTINENT. “A wise man will always keep his ears open to criticism. He will not let his critics break his nerve, but he will lesten to them just enough to check the faults and mistakes into which he may be drifting,” said the British Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, addressing the Rotary International conference at Blackpool. “Let us then ' listen to this extent to our critics on the Continent. This is what some of them are saying of us: —‘The English are too soft and too slow. Being very rich they think too much of their own comfort and too little of their national obligations. They are ready to be taxed to the extent of a thousand millions a year to pay other people to serve in their Navy, Army and Air Force, but they will not of themselves make any personal sacrifice. They have carried free discussion to such' a point that they spend months and years in talking about rearmament when the dictatorships carry out their programmes in as many days or weeks with a military precision that, apart from its immediate efficiency, is an invaluable discipline for the whole people. With' these hesitations, delays and complacencies England cannot hold its own with the mechanised autocracies.’ There is' a measure of truth in these criticisms,” Sir Samuel continued. “In the nature of things democracy is the most difficult form of government. Any system that depends upon free discussion and upon the happiness of the greatest number is very apt to drift into the almost limitless oceans of talk, and the placid backwaters of complacency. Looking back we can now say that if the needs of rearmament had been faced two years earlier there would never have been the disturbing event of the Abyssinian crisis. A Government and a Foreign Secretary without adequate : force behind them in an international emergency can never hope to have their wishes respected.”