Military coup?
Sir: So, according to Mr Cosgrave (December 22), who is voicing both his own belief and that of others, a group, perhaps, Britain is heading for a military dictatorship, or coup, as he prefers to call an eventual take-over by the forces, understandably shunning the exact word.
That institutions, political included, tend to lose some of their original efficiency with time is quite natural. But to believe and try to make others believe, as well, that, instead of adapt-. ing them, we should destroy them in order to replace them with chaos is irrational and, to use a mild word, anti-social.
"The men with the guns," to use the rather harsh-sounding phrase of Mr Cosgrave, are no political institution and, therefore, no alternative. Should a subversive group, a dynamic minority, move for the taking over of government in Britain, as it has done elsewhere, they could and should stop it, disintegrate it on time, provided, of course, that the other services responsible for internal peace would be totally incapable of doing so. (Mr Cosgrave should wonder whether the dissemination of his opinions does not tend to the creating of a subversive minority this side of the border and equally catastrophic.) No-one will deny the patriotism of the forces, no more than one does that of the overwhelming majority of the community. But to invite them to destroy the political institutions, which, in my opinion, are the "final repositories of patriotism," in order that they may not be destroyed by a subversive group or minority if and when it gathers the necessary momentum to do so, is an absurdity, apart from being quite unpatriotic. To cultivate the idea of the necessity of such an intervention, to make of it a political, or rather antipolitical, trend is taking a very heavy responsibility, not to call it otherwise. If the persons invested with popular authority have failed that is no reason for demanding the destruction of Parliament. Fight to change the persons.
It is high time that the loudspeakers should stop blaring pornography and start discussing political conscience as the only means of avoiding self-destruction.
M. D. Crionas 6 Alopekis Street, Athens, Greece.
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