The Greatest Democracy

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 119, 3 October 1941, Page 5

The Greatest Democracy

AMERICA has derived much of its strength and greatness from its policy of combining and fusing the respective qualities of many peoples. What a difference from Hitler’s maniacal fantasy of a single Aryan-German master race. The variety of America, the versatility of its citizens, and the many-sidedness of her democratic system-this is largely due to its multi-national ingredient. That is why a survey of American democracy fills me with hope. I can see economic problems there that still need to be solved, problems that statesmen like President Roosevelt are fast trying to remedy. But, if you compare the America of to-day both in politics and economics with what existed sixty years ago, you realise how

surely and steadily the democratic process leads toward social betterment. And, when I see the tremendous scale on which American government is conducted, and all that variety of national groups, I have good cause for believing that in the United States as well as in the British. Commonwealth we can find working models for a saner international system in the future. The great American poet, Walt Whitman, once wrote some fine lines in which he summed up the spirit of America’s political system: "The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him; The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for ‘them, The Congress convenes every Twelfth month for you, Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the going and coming of commerce and mails, are all for you." ("Democracy in the U.S.A." Professor Lipson, 2Y A, September 15.)