NOT EFFICIENCY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1940, Page 6

NOT EFFICIENCY

THE TOTALITARIAN WAY OF LIFE. What he described as “a grotesque fallacy—one which was fostered by Hitler’s propaganda machine and repeated by stupid people everywhere—the fallacy that a totalitarian system is efficient and therefore must conquer a Democratic system which is inefficient, incompetent, obsolete," was discussed in a broadcast talk by Mr Robert Sherwood, the American playwright. "According to this fallacy," Mr Sherwood said, "the only way for the Democratic Slates to survive is by' imitating the Nazi-Fascist-Communist type of State, which is a machine, and therefore bloodless, heartless and irresistible. This. I submit, is nonsense. Anyone would be a fool who attempted to deny the extraordinary power of the present German military' machine; but its success so far is no proof, of the strength of totalitarianism or the weakness of democracy. It is simply renewed proof of what the world has known for generations—that the Germans when unified can constitute a terrific aggressive force. The Germans have murdered the Republic of France: they outnumbered two-to-one. But suppose the battle had been between French Democracy' and Italian Fascism! Italy has had a rigid totalitarian i regime for 20 years: does anyone be-1 lieve that forty’ million Italians could have prevailed against forty million Frenchmen? The advantage that the dictatorships seem to possess over the democracies is not efficiency. A State i is not efficient in which for every' him- 1 dred workers there must be forty po- ; licemen to see that the hundred don’t! slack; and twenty Storm Troopers to I

watch the policemen, and a dozen secret agents to watch the watchers. That perhaps is a good way to solve the unemployment. problem, but it is a degraded way' of life; and, I repeat, it is not efficiency.”