America's War of Independence

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 116, 12 September 1941, Page 5

America's War of Independence

VEN though the war was regrettable and avoidable, it did produce good results for both sides. The Americans had fought in the name of self-gov-ernment. They didn’t fight for democracy, because democracy meant very little then, But, the ideals they espoused were fundamentally democratic, and later on they were developed in such a way as to give the world one of the great democracies of all time: Jefferson’s Declaration expressed the ideas of the future in words which have everywhere become an accepted part of the democratic faith: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Thus did the War of Independence lead in a democratic direction. And Britain too, understood its lesson, From this bitter experience her statesmen learned how they should treat their kinsmen overseas. They had taken a hard blow, and they were not going to risk another. Sixty years after the Declaration of Independence, the famous Durham Report laid it down that principles of tolerance, of co-operation, of self-government were to regulate future relations of the Mother Country and her colonies. You can see what happened from our own case im New Zealand. It was only a bare fourteen years after the Treaty of Waitangi when Britain granted us responsible self-government; and the European population of these islands was then a mere 30,000. New Zealanders did not have to fight for these rights, The Americans had already won that battle of them.-(" Democracy Through the Ages, The American War of Independence," by Professor Leslie Lipson, 2YA, August 25.)