DANGERS TO DEMOCRACY [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
Slit,—In your " News of the Week " paragraph in your issue of October zist on the Oxford election, the following sentence occurs : " Democracy needs defending not only against Ger- many but against forces that threaten and will increasingly threaten it at home." It would be welcome, I think, to many of your readers if you would explain exactly what was in your mind in printing these words, and would indicate from what direction you believe this threat to be coming.—Your obedient [One danger is bureaucracy, of whose growing powers the Lord Chief Justice wrote so forcibly in his book, The New Despotism. Another is the tendency to curb the freedom of the Press or to influence it in various subtle ways, or to use against it such surprising weapons as the Official Secrets Act. Another is the exertion of negative and positive influences on the exhibi- tors of films dealing with contemporary events. Another is the tendency to subordinate Parliament increasingly to the Cabinet, and to concentrate power within the Cabinet in the hands of three or four men. Some of this is inevitable, but if the temptation to dispense with discussion because it hampers the men• who have to act is not resisted the essential basis of democracy will be undermined.—En. The Spectator.]
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