ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1940, Page 7

ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY

NOT PROGRESS BUT ATAVISM. The widespread revolt against democracy is not progress but atavism, writes the Rev. D. W. Langridge in an English magazine. The “Fuhrerprinzip” (leadership principle) is a reversal of the accepted ideas of modern civilised mankind and a putting of the clock back to primitive times and primitive ideas. The abandonment of the Christian view of men that they are in the deepest of all senses equal, of equal value and enjoying equal rights, prepares the way for tyranny and leads downward to the jungle. The new mood is brazenly and on philosophical grounds to deny and ridicule the idea of human equality. Accordingly, rather by the colour of their skin, the country of their nativity, the quality of the blood which flows in their veins, men are judged and sorted out. Some are natural lords of the earth; others are natural hewers of wood and drawers of water. This reaction is in full cry today. The great democratic ideal is repudiated even in the land of its erstwhile triumphant assertion. Christianity itself is at bay. We are confronted and challenged by a vast and sinister conspiracy of men who spit upon the very idea of the brotherhood of man. A great nation, a gifted nation, one of the foremost nations in the world, has burst out into passionate revolt against progress, civilisation, and Christianity itself. The Germans call themselves the “Herrenvolk,” the natural lords of the earth and masters of their fellows.