DEMOCRACIES’ WAYS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 December 1941, Page 4

DEMOCRACIES’ WAYS

TOO READY TO RELAX. Future historians, looking back bn the first two years of the war, will surely record as one of its most astonishing characteristics the basic irresponsibility of public opinion in democracies, says the “Economist.” With their world going up in flames about them, the people are still using their sand, not to extinguish the fire, but to bury their heads. The least respite, the least lightening of the horizon, and, hey presto, the war is already won. Thus, when the fighting moves, temporarily, from the Channel to Smolensk, the emotional urgency behind the democratic war effort wanes. The failure of intelligence applies to leadership rather than to the masses. It is quite simply that, after two years of war, the economic, social and administrative implications of total war are still not fully grasped; and this lack of realisation, coupled with the general public’s readiness to slip into apathy and complacency, is the main, reason why Hitler’s policy of “one by one has so far been effective. The democracies seem incapable of profiting oy lulls; as they enter the third year there is little sign that they are yet mending their ways decisively.