DEMOCRACY’S DILEMMA

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20950, 1 November 1939, Page 10

DEMOCRACY’S DILEMMA

TOTALITARIAN CHALLENGE ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S QUESTION Abraham Lincoln said, during the American Civil War, that the United States could not be half-slave and half free. A similar question faces the world today. Can it be halfdemocratic and half-totalitarian? asks Mr J. A. Spender, writing in the Yorkshire Observer. Can the concentration of wealth and effort upon preparations for war continue without destroying the free life of peace and converting the nations into armed camps with the accompanying military discipline? Can a free press, revealing all the internal difficulties and diversions of opinion in the democratic countries, continue unchecked, when a controlled press conceals everything that compromises unity in the totalitarian? The case is sometimes put as a dilemma from which there is no escape for the democratic countries. Either they must submit to defeat, or, in the act of defending themselves, make such a sacrifice of their principles that there will be nothing worth calling democracy to defend. I do not believe it. I believe, on the contrary, that a reasonably disciplined democracy will be stronger, if the test comes, than the totalitarian States which has hidden its weaknesses through the suppression of liberty. But we must be aware of the danger and look the facts in the face. Which means that we must impose on ourselves some of the discipline which our opponents are compelled to accept, that we must keep our politics within bounds, control our tempers, bide our time and not let ourselves be drawn out of our course by the calculated provocation of the totalitarians.