FREE CHOICE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 March 1939, Page 5

FREE CHOICE

MERITS OF DEMOCRACY ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT i ROOSEVELT. PROCESSES NOT OUTWORN. By. Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. NEW YORK. March 4. President Roosevelt, addressing Congress today on the one hundred and fiftieth celebration of the foundation of the Legislature, reviewed historically the growth of democracy and praised its advantages over other forms of government.

- The expectation that the occasion would offer the President an opportunity for a strong attack against the dictators was not fulfilled, the speech confining itself to implication of the permanency of democracy as compared with other regimes. Referring to the free choice of Government, President Roosevelt said: “That after all is the great difference between what we know as democracy and those other forms of government which, though they seem new to us, are essentially old, for they revert to those systems of a concentrated, selfperpetuating power against which the representative democratic system was successfully launched several centuries ago. “Today, with many other democracies, the United States of America will give no encouragement to-the belief that our processes are outworn or that we will approvingly watch the return of forms of government which for 200 years proved their tyranny and instability alike. “Many other nations envy us. Attacks will be made on the overstatements and falsehoods intermingled gaily with the truth that mark our general election, but they are promptly followed by acquiescence in the result and a return to calmer waters as soon as the ballots are counted.”