Evening star., 1934-10-04
To the Editor of The Star:

To the Editor OF The star:
Present day discussions of democ-
racy clearly reveal its dual aspect.
Conservatives portray it as a glorifled
state decorated with the silks and
satins and tinsel of the status quo, a
dazzling heaven built of rainbow
phrases, a heaven quite as ethereal
as that of the medieval saint. 1t IS
a fairyland created by verbal liberals
to camouflage the reality Of their
conservative and aristocratic lives.
A very different conception of Ge-
mocracy is held by Thomas G.
Masaryk, President of Czechoslovakia.
As quoted in The Star about year
ago, Masaryk defined democracy as:
"A state wherein human beings do
not use one another as means of
personal qualification. Each man or
woman or child is recognized as
something intrinsically valuable. "
President Masaryk thinks that the
real democrat does not merely talk
democracy, but actually lives it in his
home, his Office, on the street and
everywhere else.
These contrasting conceptions Of de-
mocracy are brought vividly to mind
by the articles by the learned DR..
Glenn Frank published in The Sun
day Star. In remarkable language
DR.. Frank expresses grave fear that
democracy has gone bankrupt
throughout the Occident. The OPEN
ing sentence of his second article
assures us: "a deliberate and dra-
matte secession from democracy has
everywhere marked the postwar poll
cies of the Western World" DR..
Frank, in picturesque language, ere
ates fairyland in which the unwary
reader succumbS to the charms Of its
fictitious princess, Democracy, and
under the spell of her dreamy beauty
VOWS vengeance on the ogre. Dictator.
Another quotation from President
Masaryk may serve to undo this spell.
This real democrat believes that our
schools have not taught democracy
effectively. He says: Educational
methods have been inadequate. Young
people cannot sit on a school bench
from the age of to 26 without losing
contact with common, real life. How
can one expect to be followed by
common men If one has ceased to
understand their needs, material and
spiritual?"
Specifically judged, Hitler IS a
ruthless dictator whose will is forced
on 0,000, 900 people. The truth seems
to be that he has replaced other
leaders because his objectives and
methods of achieving them harmo-
nize far more completely with the
German masses than did the objec-
tives and methods of the earlier
postwar leaders.
1t is probably true that Hitler actu-
ally represents 80 per cent of the
people of Germany, and such repre-
sentation is close approach to real
democracy, even though it shocks our
academic minds, which have lived so
long in the secluded school room that
they have lost touch with the real
world at home and still'more with the
world abroad.
The many fears currently expressed
that a dictatorship is developing in
the United States have even less justi-
fication than the fear that Hitler Is
strangling democracy. This seaf is
largely due to the fact that tho group
of Americans who have been most
articulate in past years now find their
views of life no longer representative
of the material and spiritual needs of
the great majority. They cannot
understand that their ideals of liberty
and personal freedom are in conflict
with the ideae Of an overwhelming