The Wilmington morning star., 1942-12-19

ago there was a certain superficial
plausibility in saying, as General
Franco did the other day, that
! ''the destiny of our era will be
carried out either" by Bolshevism
or Fascism. There were, indeed,
many signs that the liberal dem
ocratic world-France, Britain, the
Scandinavians, the American re-
publics-was "going down a vic
tim to it's own errors" There were
many signs that in the struggle
to survive the Fascist countries
were stronger and more resoldte.
And there have b n moments
when it seemed as if only the
Soviets could find the strength to
Withstand them.
But today General Frances re-
mark seems curiously out of date,
the kind of thing man says only
because he has said it SO often
before. For today the first of the
Fascist states has been put to the
test of battle which its founder,
Mussolini deliberately chose to
put it to. We now know that what
ever else happens, the destiny Of
our era is not going to be carried
out by Mussolini. And today it
is equally evident that very con-
siderable part of the destiny of
our era is going to be carried out
by the liberal democracies, which,
before Dunkerque and Pearl Har-
Dor, seemed SO stricken with their
own errors.
The force which the liberal de-
mocracies are mastering does not
arise automatically out of the rich
earth which they have inherited.
It has had to be wrung from the
earth. and it has to be forged into
the mighty weapons which n y
brave and skillful men can WELD.
Let no one imagine, then, that the
peoples who have done these things
are spassing off the stage of his
tory, and that they will have moth
ing to say about the destiny OF
our era.
They will have much to say, and
what is more they will have the
supreme satisfaction of knowing
that what they say must be listen
ed to everywhere, and that 1t Will
be heard gladly almost evtry-
where. Why is this? Why do all
the peoples, who are free to
choose, wish us well, whereas our
enemies have not one single vol
untary ally? And why, above all,
can we say this without being
guilty of false pride and self-right-
eousness? Because we are the
bearers, often unworthy, yet the
bearers, of the great central and
universal tradition of civilized life
which originated in the basin of
the Mediterranean. Sea.
That is what our strength comes
from and our credentials - from
sources far older and deeper than
he French Revolution or the COM
|,nercialist imperialism of the nine
.eenth century And that is why
we we're stricken but we were not
destroyed by the accumulated er-
rors of the naterialist epoch. That
is why when Britain and t h n
America were faced with the is
sue of life OF death, they still pos
sessed the traditions with which
they could transcend their errors.
So they did not die, as the proph-
cts of doom predicted tn t they
would. They could draw from the
hidden sources of their energy a
force which they themselves
scarcely dared to believe t h e y
were capable of.
And because we did not invent
this tradition, but are instead pos
sessed by it and are measured by
it. our growing power excites hope
and not fear-exciting it ev e n
when we blunder, or boast OF it,
or brandish it, and are unworthy
of it. For we do not proclaim a
new theology invented 20 years ago
in the back alley of an Italian
city. or in beer hall in Munich,
but the common human tradition
lby which in the end all civilized
lmen-be they rich or poor, great