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anarchist then confined his activities wholly to the overthrow of autocrats and despots, but to-day we have the extraordinary spectacle of extremists as violently at work under the republican systems of France, America and Portugal as they used to be in the despotically governed lands of Russia and Germany. Why? Because the anarchical ideal has changed from the desire to liberate the masses to the determination to control everything by an extreme socialism. To effect this the Soviet form of government is to be established throughout the world—and that means ultimately government by adventurers who know how to play upon the worst passions of the mob, and who are prepared to overthrow everything we hold dear.
When extremists in Australia advocate views of this kind, they seem to forget that we have inherited a free system of government that is infinitely more democratic and representative, as well as juster, than the one they uphold. Ours is a system of government by the people for the people, a system that affords representation in our Parliaments to every class, not merely to one section of the people, as it is under the Soviet system. Even though we have a King at our head, we are the oldest democracy in the world. Prior to the overthrow of the Czar Russia was little further advanced than we were at the time of King John—at the beginning of the thirteenth century; and before the Kaiser abdicated, Germany had reached the stage known to the British in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries! The Sovereign People of Britain made their power felt under the
