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COIN
MACHINE
IIEVIEW
8
FOil
NOVEMBEII
J943
years of world warfare as a mere lance
corporal.
That the whole world is now marching or
living to Axis tunes is due more to the
blind torpidity of the democracies than to
the impact of Hitler's megalomania on an
aggressor race that loves its own regimen-
tation. Hitler's career would have been a
brief episode, if France and England (sup-
ported by the other victors in the First
World War) had stopped-as they might
easily have stopped-his remilitarization of
the Rhineland.
By God's Grace, after France and Bel.-
gium collapsed, Hitler di'd not invade Eng-
land but treacherously attacked Russia-
whom he had previously won from Britain,
France and their associates, by promise of a
free hand in the Baltic Provinces and a
prospective slice of Poland. Thus Hitler's
folly modified the otherwise fatal conse-
quences of democratic improvidence.
Italy, unlike Russia and Germany, was a
victor in the First World War. Many years
earlier she had, by force of arms, estab-
lished her freedom and unity under de-
mocracy somewhat of the British type. But
the abject post-war failure of her demo-
cratic government enabled Mussolini to
seize dictatorial power, and even to justify
such seizure until hi s megalomania became
extreme.
France, the victorious center of the First
World War, was experienced in democracy.
Some claim that the French Revolution
lighted the torch of modern liberty; yet its
bloody guillotine paved the way for Bona-
parte. The Second Republic could not with -
stand even the weak pressure of Napoleon
III. The modern democracy of the Third
Republic was established in 1871.
Despite unconditional victory in the First
World War (at the cost of 1,400,000
Frenchmen killed) and the renewed men-
ace of Germany, this Third Republic be-
came so permeated with disunity, corrup-
tion and folly that in 1940, with only 60,-
000 killed, it surrendered about two-thirds
of France, assumed the payment of crush-
ing and continuing tribute, and turned over
nearly two million of its fighting men as
prisoners of war.
Japan's attempts at parliamentary govern-
ment were checked by assassination of its
leaders, and finally ended with seizure of
power by the military cliques.
IV
If these failures of attempts at modern
democracy represented merely the inepti-
tude of other races for our own better type
of government, we might perhaps retain our
American self-complacency; but such is far
from the case. Its inadequacy, even for self-
protection, has enabled dictatorships to
overthrow democracy in - five of the Great
Powers, and has led three of them to seek
the destruction of the two remaining Great
'
Democracies.
In view of these national demonstrations
that extreme democracy produces by re-
action extreme dictatorship, and that these
opposite extremes breed world-war (or
threat of such war), the logical way to
livable peace is for each extreme to draw
nearer to "the middle way- the golden
mean." That seems axiomatic, and is none
the less so for being Aristotelian_
Fortunately, modern democracy can in-
augurate such a movement, while vastly
benefiting itself, by merely eliminating its
present outstanding defects.
Since nations have been jockeyed into
choosing or tolerating one or the other dan-
gerous extreme, of the whole range of gov-
ernmental possibilities, the safe highway
to international peace is now deserted. Un-
restricted democracy is "ditched" on the
one side, and unrestricted dictatorship is
"ditched" on the other side of the road.
Why must the world submit to destruc-
tive breakdowns in either ditch, when we
might travel safely on the smooth wide sur-
face of the road? None need compete for
its center; nations need keep only close
enough for peaceful intercourse.
After two world-wars in one generation,
a wise revision of democracy, based on
world-wide experience to date, would chal-
lenge the respect of other nations, and
gradually gain their adhesion. For better
national governmen t is the only way to
permanent world peace.
V
The foregoing leads to special considera-
tion of the two Democratic Great Powers
now in being-Great Powers now in being
-Great Britain and the United States.
Although both of these great democracies
are now based upon unrestricted suffrage,
democratic government in Great Britain
(without a written constitution) is limited
or supplemented by means that do not exist
in the United States.
The Crown, the House of Lords, the
Privy Council, and the traditions of cen-
turies of empire-building and world leader-
ship, have been immensely potent factors in
British government. Such traditions are
largely the consequences of extraordinary
characteristics in the British people, in-
cluding a deep-rooted sense of justice, with
corresponding respect for established law
and order, and a comprehensive collection
of virtues which are loosely termed "sports-
manship."
These British factors have developed,
among other benefits, well-qualified "public
servants", from whose ranks graduates a
corps of able administrators, completely
divorced from politics and capped by that
unique group of "Permanent Secretaries"
in charge of the Great Departments of
State.
It is difficult for us Americans to gauge
methods of government in a Country where
the Lord Chancellor (presiding over the
House of Lords) could declare, regarding a
Bill from th e House of Commons to reduce
the powers of the House of Lords, "It is
legal for your Lordships to defeat this Bill:
but it is unconstitutional for you to do so"
-when there was no written constitution,
and the Supreme Court of the Empire was
composed exclusively of members of the
House of Lords!
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