Evening star., 1937-10-17
WAYDICTATORSHIPS RISE
POSES QUESTION FOR u. S.
DemOcracies Need Defenders Who Will
Fight, Observer Says, Asking Is
Roosevelt That Kind of Fighter.


ence on staying in power. The dictator
rarely says that he wants to keep
power merely because he enjoys the
possession of power-but II that per-
sonal motive was ever absent from any
dictator, history has not recorded the
fact.
''The Terror"
Now We come to the final flower Of
dictatorship. For keeping possession
Of power the universal method is ter
ror. Opponents Of the dictatorship
and critics Of it are imprisoned, exiled,
executed. There are mass executions,
bloody "purges." The whole popula-
tion is kept in a state of intimidation.
One of the most vivid and convincing
chapters in Prof. Hoover's book is his
description of Terror as a Social In
stitution."
THE 20 years Of record of the
Soviet state, supplemented by the
record of is years OF fascism and
years Of national socialism (Nazi)
afford the strongest evidence that
terror is the normal concomitant of
the totalitarian state system =.
Terror is the only instrument suffi-
GENTLY powerful to enable the at
tainment of the goal of totality."
After all this price has been paid,
after courts and parliaments have
been suppressed, after the people are
completely subjected to autocratic
rule, after they have submitted to
terrorism-after all that, is the origi-
nal promise Of economic happiness
made good? Does the totalitarian
form of government produce the eco
nomlc happiness which it promises?
For the answer, read Prof. Hoover:
- - The people of Russia, Italy
and Germany have been required to
make sacrifices in their standard Of
living which no parliamentary, capi-
talistic state could have required, ex-
cept perhaps In war time. The neces-
sarily voiceless privation of the peo-
pie is accompanied by admonishment
with respect to their duty to suffer
all for the state, and by the assur-
ance at the same time that all talk Of
food shortages or of increased cost
OF living is the work of lying traitors,
and by summary arrest of all who dare
to complain"
Why Democracies End.
To Americans, for a special reason,
the most somberly alarming part Of
Prof. Hoover's book is that in which
he describes how and why demo-
cratic governments come to an end.
They came to an end in Europe be-
cause the individual men in office,
who were responsible for preserving
democracy and parliamentary gov
ernment-these men were not suffi.
clently devoted to democracy. They
were not sufficiently earnest in the
defense OF democracy. The reason for
the death of democracies, for the
displacement of democracy by die
tatorship, lies in the lack OF dynam-
ism in the governments which fell and
in the possession of dynamism by
relationships which came to power.
The survival of parliament
tarianism thus depends upon the
nerves of its leaders. Dictators
come to power partly because the
leaders of the governments which were
overthrown = did not have the will
to fight"
/ From these sentences Of Prof. Hoo
yer We see why democracies fall. They
fall because the men in control of
them are not sufficiently determined
to preserve democracy. It is clearly
to be inferred from Prof. Hoover's
book that If the men at the heads
of democracies had been sufficiently
loyal to democracy and sufficiently
determined they might have kept
democratic governments alive.
Let us apply this to conditions in
the United States. For the preserva-
ton of democracy in the United States
it is indispensable that the admins
tration in charge Of our democracy
should have strong will to pre-
serve it. Is that what we have in
President Roosevelt? Is he Presi-
dent who would use every resource
OF determination to preserve the form
OF government and society which
America has? Or Is he one, rather,
who, far from being determined to
preserve our traditional form, looks
tolerantly upon the new order?
Copyright 1879