COSTS OF DICTATORSHIPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 March 1939, Page 9

COSTS OF DICTATORSHIPS

OBSERVATIONS BY PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. “Dictatorship involves costs which the American people will never pay,’' said President Roosevelt in his message to Congress, “the cost of our spiritual values, the cost of the blessed right of being able to say what we please, the cost of freedom of religion, the cost of having oui’ children brought up as free dignified human beings not as pawns moulded and enslaved by the machine. The world has grown so small and weapons of attack so swift that no nation can be safe as long as any ether single powerful nation refuses to settle grievances at the council table. If any Government, bristling with implements of war, insists on policies of force the weapons of defence give the only safety. We have learned that the God-fearing democracies of the world which observe the sanctity of treaties and good faith in their dealings with other nations cannot safely be indifferent to international lawlessness anywhere. They cannot forever let pass without effective protest acts of aggression against sister nations — acts which automatically undermine us all. There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend not only their homes, but the tenets of faith and humanity whereon their Churches, their Governments and their very civilisation are founded.”