Wirarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 1940. LEADERSHIP IN DEMOCRACY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 March 1940, Page 4

Wirarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 1940. LEADERSHIP IN DEMOCRACY.

TN time of peaee and in time of war, the existence of French Cabinets is apt to he precarious, and the resignation of the Daladier Cabinet, though somewhat sudden and unexpected, is not particularly surprising. In the Croat A\ ar. there were many changes of Coverinnent in France until the Republic settled down under the war leadership of M. Clemenceau Now as then, these changes and readjustments o! politico leadership certainly imply no weakening of the national determination to pursue the Struggle to victory, In the present instance, the enforced reconstruction ol the French Cabinet plainly is the outcome of demands lor a more vigorous and effective prosecution of the war. Precisely the same is true of more or less tentative demands that are being made at present . for measures of Cabinet reconstruction in Britain. Enemy propagandists no doubt will pretend to see in any changes of political leadership that are made in Allied countries indications of weakness and of failure to stand up to the strain of war. In fact, however, the ability of democracy' to change and reorganise its leadership in times of stress is a signal proof of its innate strength and of its superiority, to the system of dictatorship. There can he no better evidence of national unity than in the approval of changes intended to ensure an increasingly effective pursuit, of the aims on which the nation is intent, today the real unity of the Allied nations, in which political and other changes are possible, is in absolute contrast to the alleged unity of the totalitarian States, in which such changes are, for the time at least, impossible. In the speech he delivered a couple of weeks ago, Ilefi’r Hitler claimed that “behind the German soldiers stood a united nation.” All the world knows, however, that the German nation is less united than subservient to force. The Nazi dictators, as Dr Goebbells observes at limes, have conquered their own people. Against Herr Hitler’s claim, just mentioned, the British Independent Labour Party at once placed a message it had received from the Independent Socialist Party of . Germany—a message which read in part: — In the trenches, in munition factories, in the markets, and in farmyards we are spreading our leaflets demanding food, higher wages, peace and the end of the Hitler regime. The German workers do not want the war, but if they remain silent it is because behind their backs there is an armed force of bayonets. ITow{ far and how long the Nazi dictatorship will lie able to go in maintaining the so-called unity that exists al present in. Germany is an open question. Manifestly, however', it is merely foolish to talk of either unity or freedom in a country where freedom of speech and opinion are repressed savagely and with the aid of elaborately organised domestic espionage, and where any effective exercise of voting rights has been abolished. The continuance in Germany of what its Nazi dictators call unity depends upon the ability of these dictators, with the forces at their disposal, to maintain and extend conditions of national serfdom. Political 1 changes like those that are now being made in France and are being talked about in Britain are nothing else than a healthy enforcement of the will of the people, finding unhampered expression. It is possible that in Germany there are elements, perhaps considerable elements, of willing subservience to the Nazi tyranny, but it is none the less an abuse of language to speak of the unity of the people of a country in which the expression and exercise of the popular will is prevented by one of the most ruthless and elaborate systems of suppression of which history has any record.