It should also be noted that this tradition is not inseparably related to industrialization. For example, Germany was highly industrialized, and yet not only the German masses but even the German universities put up no fight to prevent the triumph of Nazism. The difference between England and Germany lay in the fact that the British people were for centuries—since, in fact, the days of the Magna Carta—getting familiar with the democratic way of life and had experienced the glow of freedom. The German people, on the other hand, were brought up in an authoritarian tradition. The subversion of the young Weimar Republic therefore signified no deep loss to them. Secondly, not only the experience but also the cultural tradition of the English-speaking peoples was liberal as a result of the Renaissance which harbingered a new and secular philosophy of life in Western Europe. Germany and Eastern Europe did not go through this liberating phase in their cultural history. Consequently, while industrialization brought economic prosperity to Germany, as with Japan it also meant the strengthening of the indigenous authoritarian regime and facilitated the rise of modern totalitarianism. The experience of Russia has been the same, and we are now witnessing its repetition in the case of China and Eastern Europe.
This is not to suggest that industrialization, even planned industrialization, is in itself inimical to democracy. What is sought to be emphasized, and what is generally not realized in underdeveloped countries, is that economic development is not enough to ensure the survival or growth of democracy. It is true that starving men will not, as a rule, put freedom above bread. But neither are well-fed animals keen on throwing off the yoke that harnesses them to their master's end—and they need not even be wellfed: habit, and the hope of a luscious bunch of grass at the end of the day's work, are enough to keep them happy and contented. The fact is that freedom can live only if the people have the will to remain free. Where such a will does not exist in sufficient measure as the crystallization of tradition and experience, it has to be created by planned effort undertaken by those in whose custody the future of democracy lies.
