“Democracy, it is quite true, has been a failure in many countries, but let me put this idea before you. Democracy was grafted in those countries on a stem of Absolutism, and the graft does not do well. It is not a natural growth, and in many countries Democracy blundered into chaos…But for us to surrender our liberty would indeed be to graft something completely alien on to the stem of an old oak. Do not forget, in spite of what is happening abroad, there are freedom-loving men and women in every country to-day in Europe. And you cannot think what anxiety they are looking to this country to-day as the last stronghold of freedom, standing like a rock in a tide that is threatening to submerge the world.”

—  Stanley Baldwin

Broadcast from London (6 March 1934); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 23
1934

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Stanley Baldwin 225
Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1867–1947

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