easily have been used to enforce totalitarian systems upon the free democratic world, with consequences appalling to human imagination. god has willed that this shall not be and we have at least a breathing space to set our world house in order before this peril has to be encountered: and even then, if no effort is spared, we should still possess so formidable a superiority as to impose effective deterrents upon its employment, or threat of employment, by others. ultimately, when the essential brotherhood of man is truly embodied and expressed in a world organization with all the necessary practical safeguards to make it effective, these powers would naturally be confided to that world organizations.
now i come to the second of the two marauders, to the second danger which threatens the cottage homes, and the ordinary people -- namely, tyranny. we cannot be blind to the fact that the liberties enjoyed by individual citizens throughout the united states and throughout the british empire are not valid in a considerable number of countries, some of which are very powerful. in these states control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all-embracing police governments to a degree which is overwhelming and contrary to every principle of democracy. the power of the state is exercised without restraint, either by dictators or by compact oligarchies operating through a privileged party and a political police. it is not our duty at this time when difficulties are so numerous to interfere forcibly in the internal affairs of countries which we have not conquered in war. but we must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the english-speaking world and which through magna carta, the bill of rights, the habeas corpus, trial by jury, and the english common law find their most famous expression in the american declaration of independence.
all
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