The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1935-04-02
NEWSPAPERS OPINION
DICTATORSHIP: A CONFESSION


Dictatorship wears upon its sleeve confession
which those who do not run may read ms may
not be clear when Communism or Fasclsm are con-
sdered as isolated phenomena, but the shlbooletss
of despotism stand starky revealed whenever auto
cratic systems clash with democracy.
And clash they do. For though each appears CIR
cumscribed within its geographical borders
the conflict between the idealogies OF dictatorship
and self-government is undoubtedly one of the great
issues of modern times The ultimate fact, as Cen
era SHUTS so pontedly dscerns, is that tyranny
and freedom cannot live side by sde' any more
than Lincoln's America could continue to exist half
slave and half free.
The conflict is apparent wherever men have eyes
to see; it is visible wherever there is courage to
balance moral losses against physical gains upon
dictatorial edgers. Such balance sheet has been
drawn by William Henry Chamberlin on the basis
of his long experience the Monitors correspoA-
dent in Moscow. His Postscript to Russia in TO-
days magazine section concludes that the 4,oOo'-
900 lives deliberately lost in famine outweigh
the 10 OOO 900 tons of pig IRON which Russia pro-
duced in 1884. ...
But there is more to it than excoriation of fam
inc as an instrument of Soviet policy Mr. Cham
berlin adds: t. "a.
Broadly speaking, my strongest feeling after
living almost II years under dictatorship is a
very keen and lively enthusiasm for civil liberties
and democratic methods of government. More than
any other single cause, in my opinion, the dlctato
rial method has been responsible for what seems
to me the utterly disproportonate cost OF such
progress as Russia has achieved under the Soviet
system
It is possible to elaborate what "civil liberties
and democratic methods have that dictatorship has
not To do so, the confusion of Technology needs
be laid aside Instead there must be discernment
of ultimate values and an appreciation of the final
purposes of government. ... ..
For relationships confess that they rule by force
because they cannot rule by law. They take refuge
in RECOMMENDATION because they afraid of liberty.
They enforce doctrine because their PHILOSOPHERS
will not stand the impact of free thought. They
make the individual subservient to the state be-
cause the state itself has not grasped its duty 10
the individual Arbitrary will rushes in where rea-
son fails. And oppression acting in the name OF
order" is enthroned because the task of creating
a citzenry capable of self-government has proved
too staggering undertaking.
1t is this unwillngness to face the basic task
of every righteous government that constitutes the
fundamental weakness OF dlctatOrlal systems. IL Is
this that robs absoutism of permanence and what
ever its physical victories, writes in red ink the
final balance of its effect upon nation. Thus, as
John Stuart Mill wrote nearly a century ago:
"The worth Of state in the long run is the
worth of the individuals composing it =. a state
which dwarfs its in order that they may be
more docile instruments in its hands, for Dene
fetal purposes, will find that with small men no
great thing really be accomplished; and that
the perfection of machinery to which it has sacri-
feed everything will in the end avail it nothing,
for want of the vital power which, in order that
the machine might work more smoothly, it has pre-
ferred to banish."
Dictatorshps, whatever their modern trappings,
remain as vestiges of military society, in which
the dominant considerations were stability against
invasion from without and against revolt from
within. The mantle of force is laid aside as states
progress and as humans learn that reason and JUS
tice are of far greater effect than violence and OQ
preston Dictatorshps represent the poor substi-
tute of physical for moral courage. They not
an evidence of strength; they a confession OF
weakness.-Christian Science Monitor.
A CURE FOR HARD TIMES