Democracy in Danger Whilst all the world is discussing the
new threat to the principle of democracy arising from the triumph of Hitlerism in Germany, Miss Eleanor Rathbone, M.P., advances in a letter to the Manchester Guardian sonic suggestions for organizing the free democracies " as vigorously and effectively as the tyrannies arc doing," She proposes " some kind of defensive league or alliance of free democracies for political and cultural purposes" which would include the Dominions, the United States, the Scandinavian countries, Holland, and perhaps France, Spain, Belgium and Switzerland—that is to say, countries which have executives responsible to freely elected Parliaments and enjoy freedom of speech and of the Press. The suggestion is full of interest, and well deserves to be explored further, though there is always some danger of stereotyping the forms of democracy and dividing Europe into two sharply con- trasted camps—just as Greece was divided before the Peloponnesian War. The first step is to leave no stone unturned to perfect the form of our own democracy, and to purge it of elements of inefficiency which in Russia, Italy and Germany have led to Communism, Fascism, or both existing side by side as warring and disruptive elements. * * *
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