The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-11-16

AAGANy 81 0ONeAA4yg q AACW oCooOA4
l. began. This time it was Fascism,
and its apostle was Benito MusSolini.
II, too, was to sweep the world, and
for the moment millions of persons
are spellbound by the universal doc
trine, and Signor Mussolini, who is
nobody's fool, has just permitted
himself to indulge in a speech
prophesying a universal future for
the notions he happens to be ap-
plying in italy.
Wilson did it in his season, Lenin
in his, even Coolidge in his, so I
suppose Mussolini has to do it in
his. But there is no reason why
any one who can remember the day
before yesterday should be unduly
impressed.
There is no disposition in the
human mind to believe that in the
newest and most spectacular politi-
cal movement there is some kind Of
irresistible and illimitable energy.
But it seems to me that when we
look into the history of great move
ments of thought and feeling, as
piration and action, we find that
they are not irresistible and not il
limitable.
They do not sweep the world. Even
the most successful of them are sue
cesSful only within certain parts of
the world. There was a time when
Europe believed that Islam might
sweep the world. 1t got to the gates
of Vienna and no further. We
speak of the rise of capitalism, and
when we are in a hurry, feel that
it conquered the world. In the last
three centuries capitalism has
made great progress in Western
Europe and North America. But it
never did bring the whole world
under the capitalist order; the
greater part of Asia, Africa, South
America and even Central and
Eastern Europe has, in the main,
known capitalism only as an ex-
ternal intrusion, through the OPP
Grafton of imperialism, rather than
as the normal method of it's life.
There are capitalists and corpora
lions in Mexico, for example, but
Mexican life is, on the whole, not
capitalistic at all. Russia, which
overthrow Capitalism" never really
had it. The same might be said
for a large part of Italy, most of
the Balkans and great tracts of
Central Europe.
Il II
THE Reformation was one of the
4 great movements of modern
times. But it did not sweep Europe.
The American and the French
Revolutions of the eighteenth CEN
tury were the signals for the ad-
vance of democratic doctrines. But
those doctrines never did make any
lasting impression east of the Rhine
or south of the Alps and outside of
Europe anywhere expect where the
EngliSh-speaking people had settled.
No one of these movements has
been universal The world still is
composed Of peoples protesting all
the religions, living under all con-
ceivable political systems and~under
different kinds of social order. The
power Of any doctrine is limited by
deep underlying habits, by circum-
stances of geography and by the
accumulated force of the past. The
world is too varied, mankind is too
deeply set in its ways to make it
possible for any one set of ideas
to become universal. The world
never became wholly capitalistic or
wholly democratic and it will not
become wholly Communist or
wholly anything else.
The parochiaI mind looks upon
its idea as the one and only idea.
1t was parochial of us to think that
we could impose democracy on the
world and make the world safe for
democracy. 1t was parochial of the
Russians to think that when they
took over the ruins Of czarist feu-
dalism they had overthrown cap
italism. 1t is parochial of the
Italians to think that form of
dictatorship which seems to suit a
country that has known a feeble
imitation of democracy for fifty
years is going. to suit countries in
habited by people who have been
evolving democratic institutions for
700 years.
1t should not be too astonishing
to any one that liberalism is Off
cially declared dead in Russia; Ger
many and Italy. When, in heavens
name, was it alive in those lands?
T LIBERALISM will be dead when
IL it is abandoned by the people
who made liberalism and have lived
under it, they and their ancestors
before them. To say that the Rus
slams accept autocracy today is to
say that they accept what they
have always accepted. To say that
the Germans have set up a deif1ed
ruler is not really so astonishing
when you recall that they got rid
Of william II only fifteen years
ago. To say that MuSsolini is sue
cessful ruler in Italy should surprise
no one who remembers the long
line of his Italian predecessors.
But in France, in Switzerland, in
Scandinavia, in the British Nations,
in the United States, there are peo-
pies with a very different history
and, therefore, with very different
habits. 1t will be for them to say
what is the future of liberalism, how
it is to be preserved and where it is
to be modified. 1t is not for nations
which never have known it, or, hav-
ing tried it for a short while, failed
to live by it, to instruct the liberal
peoples about the future Of
liberalism.
So if it is Communism men wish
to examine, they must go to Russia,
if it is Fascism, they must go to
Italy. but if it is liberalism and
democracy they must go to France,
to England, to Canada, to Australia,
and to the United States. For that
is where they viii find the peoples
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