Democratic Freedom

National flags are the symbols that stand for the spirit of the country they represent. On our cover design the Union Jack and the New Zealand flag are a sign of this country's unity with the Motherland. With the flags of all the other members of the British Commonwealth of Nations and of France, they form a galaxy which spells, in shining letters, the magic word “Freedom.”

These are, in part, the answers of the “Winds of the World,” as interpreted by Kipling nearly fifty years ago, to the question “What is the Flag of England?”

The North Wind:

“I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame,
“Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came.
“I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast,
“And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed.

The South Wind:

“I have wrenched it free from the Halliards to hang for a wisp on the Horn;
“I have chased it north to the Lizard-ribboned and rolled and torn;
“I have spread its folds o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea;
“I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.

The East Wind:

“Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake,
“But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England's sake—
“Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid—
“Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.

The West Wind:

“The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it—the frozen dews have kissed—
“The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist.
“What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare,
“Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!”

In this issue, representative New Zealand writers have expressed, with free pens, their personal views on various phases of the fight for Freedom to which the Empires of Britain and France are pledged and in which they have the sympathy, and where possible the support of all those, in any part of the world, who cherish democratic freedom as the only tolerable condition under which civilization can be maintained.

What is this democratic freedom? Beyond all doubt it is something which takes its rise in the British Constitution—and this applies to both the American and the French forms of democracy as well as to those of the smaller nations which help to constitute the most progressive portion of the civilised world.

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And what is this British Constitution?

Carlyle had one idea of it. “In England,” he said, “by public meetings, by petitions, by elections, leading articles, and other jangling hubbub and tongue fence which perpetually goes on everywhere in that country, people ascertain one another's strength, and the most obdurate House of Lords has to yield and give-in before it comes to cannonading and guillotinement; this is a saving characteristic of England. Nay, at bottom, is not this the celebrated English Constitution itself? This unspoken Constitution …. is, in our times, verily invaluable.”

It has been described, broadly and simply as “a polity which secures the liberty of the subject.” It is not a “written” constitution such as most countries have –perhaps for the reason that the principles of liberty for which it stands take a wider meaning as the years go by. As one commentator has said: in British communities “The supreme law of the land is the constitution,” whereas in, say, the United States, “the written Constitution is the supreme law of the land.”

Naturally enough, the spirit of British freedom is expressed, in perhaps its simplest form, in the American “Declaration of Independence,” particularly in the words “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That Declaration charged the British Government of the time with a number of abuses, including legislation “for abolishing the free system of English Laws in a neighbouring province.”

The lesson of 1776 was not lost on Great Britain. Hence, prior to the Great War, Cramb was able to describe the general aim of British Imperialism in this sentence: “To give all men within its bounds an English mind; to give all who come within its sway the power to look at the things of man's life, at the past, at the future, from the standpoint of an Englishman; to diffuse within its bounds that high tolerance in religion which has marked this Empire from its foundation; that reverence yet boldness before the mysteriousness of life and death characteristic of our great poets and our great thinkers; that love of free institutions, that pursuit of an ever-higher justice and a larger freedom which, rightly or wrongly, we associate with the temper and character of our race wherever it is dominant and secure.”

This aim has been achieved in every part of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

Speaking of New Zealand, our Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage, has said:

“In a democracy, the supremacy of a Parliament freely chosen by the people is the keystone of the arch. The laws made and the resolutions passed by such a Parliament are the will of the people…”

And again:

“We have, in this country, an economic system which is capable (as has been shown) of bringing, within the reach of every man and woman who is willing and able to work, the highest standards of living in the world. That system has been created under democracy. Without democracy it would disappear overnight.”

To a New Zealander, a South African, a Canadian, an Australian, and to those of every other nationality under the British Flag, freedom is a condition of life they enjoy, for the most part without analysing. It has become their natural environment. In times of peace they may forget that:

“All we have of freedom, all we use or know—
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw—
Leave to live by no man's leave underneath the Law—”

That “Ancient Right” has been threatened before and is again threatened. Hitler, at the head of the Nazi party, in a country that unfortunately never had the “Ancient Right” of the British—else the Germans would never have tolerated his Party's domination—has been scheming and lying, blustering, threatening and deceiving, for years, in the hope of achieving Nazi dominance of the world. What that dominance means to conquered countries the world knows from the dire conditions it has already produced in Austria, Czecho-Slovakia and Poland.

Britain and France were definitely threatened by the extension in Europe of the rule of brute force, which is the only “Right” the Nazis know.

Bacon, that wisest of Englishmen, said that “a just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.”

That brings us to the real reason why we are now at war. Our “Ancient Right,” our freedom, all we hold dear, are in imminent danger.

The British Dominions Secretary, Mr. Anthony Eden, puts the position this way: “This is not a war of aggrandisement or a clash of dynasties. It is a struggle page 7 for international decency. The great Dominions overseas typify the right to be free. That right is at stake —the rights of all peoples to lead their own lives, to think as they will, to worship as they will, and to cultivate the arts in freedom and peace….

“It is a simple and clear truth that the Nazi system is based on brute force. It is a denial of civilization. There will be no free life for the peoples of the world until that system is destroyed.”

Sir Edward Beatty, President of the Canadian Pacific Railway, spoke recently of Canada as being “face to face with the single task of preserving liberty, justice and religion against barbarous tyranny…. We are,” said Sir Edward, “more united in our national purpose in Canada to-day than I have ever known the country to be….”

In the course of a recent broadcast on “The Railways and War,” the Hon. D. G. Sullivan, the New Zealand Minister of Railways, said:

“Safety to continue the line of progress along which New Zealand is travelling can only be ensured by the victory of Britain and her great ally, France. As has been pointed out by Mr. Savage and Mr. Fraser, all our rights, our freedom, our social and national security, our very national existence will be destroyed unless we win.

“To carry the flag of freedom; to maintain democracy as a living instrument for human welfare; to win out against the madness which possesses Germany's rulers in the present war–these are duties and responsibilities which we, New Zealanders, accept as the only decent thing to do, not in a spirit of blind patriotic fervour but as a cold, considered action, based on beliefs which we hold and cherish as the hope and inspiration of civilization.”

If we are “to reap the harvest of perpetual peace,” unity in country and commonwealth are a first necessity to the winning of the war. That unity, coupled with a sterner determination, becomes more apparent every day, as atrocities in Hitler's “total warfare” show that the Nazis have borrowed the methods of “the merciless Indian Savages,” referred to by Jefferson: “whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

Referring to the voyage and landing (described as “This New Odyssey”) of the first contingent of the new Anzacs, the “New York Times” commented:

“The British should be proud that their daughter nations in the Pacific, so distant from the war, are so well aware of all it means for the continuance of their democratic way of life.”

And the Press Association struck a high key when it cabled on the 12th February: “Britain has acknowledged the response of New Zealand and Australia to the war drums beating to quarters for the freedom of the world.”

Those who know and love our land know also that to this high key New Zealand will continue to respond without flinching and without reserve until Freedom's fight is won.

For, as Kipling sang:

“When Drake went down to the Horn
And England was crowned thereby
“Twixt seas unsailed and shores unhailed
Our Lodge—our Lodge was born
(And England was crowned thereby).
Which never shall close again
By day nor yet by night,
While man shall take his life to stake
At risk of shoal or main
(By day nor yet by night).
But standeth even so
As now we witness here,
While men depart, of joyful heart,
Adventure for to know
(As now bear witness here!)”

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