Greenbelt cooperator. (Greenbelt, Md.) 1937-1954, 1940-12-05

feeling that no time to act democrats w.
that 1T is now too late. We are told that if what
in France and also in England until recently,
democracy, then possibly the American structure
was also faulty and unsound, and that it ght be
we'll for US to give up democratic aspirati ons,
American dream, and become again only repub-
lie, strong nation without pretense of being any
thing else. We even discuss how many of civil
liberties shall surrender, and to whom we shall
surrender them, in order to retain the rest, some
small beggar's portion of rich heritage.
Such an attitude is profoundly tragic than
the defeat of armed forces, for if the mind find
no way to work, and the soul find faith, then
defeat is imminent, with without war; and is ca
tastrophe indeed. But such attitude, a con-
clusion, is completely mwarranted. True we have
not yet begun to find counterpoise to ism, to
its apparent success in solving unemployment, its
strange mixture of coercion and levelling. But we
nave not yet tried to forge the dynamic alternat
which is needed. Yet forge it we can, if we must.
Unfortunately alone of all the nations have
that opportunity. will revert to this.
Some years ago became interested in finding out
why and how it that Germany, Italy and Austria
turned so quickly to fascism. That not in the
cards as profession had read them. Our textbooks
in political science mad told that twent eth
century the century the Towering of the de-
mocrac1es. 1t was time when newspaper cores
pondence predicting the internal owe rthrow of
the Nazf regime in Germany from starvation, and
economists were still predicting its Immediate col
Lapse BECAUSE 1t had no gold. However, spent some
years studying what happened travelled those ma
tions and in those under the guns, talked to in
Ws1ness, finance, labor coopera lives and govern
nent about at had happened to them, constantly
keeping in mind our om nation, and weighing the
similarity dissimi1arity of its problems to
theirs. Your officers have invited me to analyze
this with you.
wish to skip what you already k1ow--the cruel
history Of coercion, terrorization, concentrate on
and assassination, the division first the German
nation and of Europe and second-class
citizens and the mli liations and deradatio ns of
the latter. It has been told. A history of our
CIVIL Iar, battle by eattleE may be absorbing,
the attempt to find its siifi canoe in the
hlman and in he Of a tod
Is more Important to than its crimes, for obvi-
ous1y, to rise and to survive it had to APPEAL to
considerable number Of people. It could neither
r1Se nor survive in cacuul. The aJpeals it used
may De effective here in 81 milar crises.
10 measure this significance we must have Sore
common markers of understanding and agreement. Let
us agree, II we may, that concept Of 1emocrac CIV
mas been wider and deeper than the concept of the
oera1 state In which, for example, England and
france since 1900 grew up. more than restric-
t1on on the power of government. It is more than
the absence OF restraints the individual. It is
more than the individual right to vote, more than
the guarantee OF civil liberties.
1t is also the positive use OF poll ical power to
broaden the opportunity for indi dual To act
not only for himself but for his family, comni ty
and nation. America democracy is a way of life in
which the ordinary adult the iyht to partici-
pate In the ction necessary rry out these de-
cisions. ~
The corollary to this fundamental and positive
principle is concept of equality VIII oh declares
that no individual shall be in a position to exer-
else power, either economic political or intel
lectual, another individual to the 1at+er,s
permanent ii sadvantage.
If agree this we find at once that the lib
eral states which overthrow in Italy and Ger
by fascim and in Austria by clerical authori-
tarianism and then by National Soc alism were not
democratic states They were, the contrary, lib
eral states, based the orthodox nineteenth cen
tury idea that freedom and opportunity could only
taken from individuals by institution, the
state, and that therefore the the state kept
its hands off, the better. They u1pire states
supp osed to referee between groups conflicting
interests and help out those TUNED out to be
permanent underdogs by such old age pen
sions and unemployment insurance. That concept of
the arbitrative state has many adherents here.
The officials of those states thought the state
could never be anything else, or anything else,
and we're mortified when Mussolini and Hitler made It
do and be everything. In fact, they really saw no
choice between state unable to control the import
ant decisions in nations life, the decisions a.
bout Mhsther the sta ..