Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1938. DEMOCRACY AND IDOLATRY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 December 1938, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1938. DEMOCRACY AND IDOLATRY.

•J)ECLARING, in his first address in the United States, that believers in democracy should stand together “against a new form of idolatry—worship of the State to which all men must bow down,” Mr Anthony Eden at the same time was careful ,to restrict himself to a statement of his case in rather broad and general terms. He was open and frank in declaring that the principles of democracy must be upheld against the new idolatry which demands of nations the sacrifice of freedom of faith, speech and worship, but, as an American commentate lias pointed out, Mr Eden “plainly felt himself bound by political obligations to avoid any application of his expressed creed to specific events culminating in the Munich Eact.

Mr Eden naturally has no thought of discussing British political controversies in the United States and indeed, before leaving his own country, had urged that party and sectional, differences ought to be set aside in coping with a national and international emergency. In spite of the measure of reticence he chooses to observe regarding the current shaping of policy ill Britain, it may be hoped that Mr Eden, in his brief visit to the United States, will be able to do something to confirm and strengthen, in that country and his own, trends of democratic thought that are already well defined, though they have not yet found the clear expression that is to be desired in national policy and in co-operation between democratic nations.

Though there is no question of holding British political divisions up for judgment before American audiences, Mi Eden’s denunciation of totalitarian regimentation evidently is hardly compatible with the policy of appeasement as it is now being developed in Europe and with the contention of Mr Chamberlain and his supporters that one country need not concern itself with the manner in which another is governed. As against that comfortable belief, the former British Foreign Secretary proclaims in broad terms, but none the less plainly, an inevitable and irreconcilable opposition between the faith of the democracies and that of the totalitarian dictatorships.

We know (he told his New York audience) that we are destined to live in a period of emergency, of which no one can see the end. If, throughout the testing period ... we hold fast to our faith, cradle it in stone and set it in steel to defend it, we can yet" hand on our inheritance of freedom intact to the generations to come.

"While Mr Eden emphatically repudiates as criminal the doctrine that war is inevitable, his essential contention .is that the democracies must face totalitarian idolatry in strength and not in complaisant ‘weakness. His belief finds support in the fact that even those who are inclined to go furthest in the policy of appeasement agree, and indeed insist, that the democracies are under the necessity of developing their armed strength to the utmost.,,

No one, as Mr Eden has said, can see the end of the period of emergency in which we live, but at least it is an element of strength in the position of the democracies that the faith by which they are upheld is freely open to examination and discussion in the full light of day, while the ruling principles of the totalitarian dictatorships are being maintained only by a suppression of individual freedom as ruthless and as barbarous as the world has ever seen. Great as are the difficulties that impede co-operation between democratic nations, there is a widespread and growing opinion amongst the people of these nations that believers in democracy, as Mr Eden has said, should stand together against the new form of idolatry—worship of the State.