The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 1933. THE NEW AMERICA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 189, 12 August 1933, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 1933. THE NEW AMERICA.

Ff>r the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance For the future in the d'Stance, And the good chat we van dn.

Old ideas in America are now being questioned. Many Americans have lost their bearings, and are starting on a voyage of discovery. The old ideas of progress centred in faith in the perfectability of the common man, in belief in equality of easy opportunity, and conviction that the United States could furnish an unlimited supply of that opportunity, and thus enable lower types of humanity to achieve their perfected development. The main principles of democracy represented the active faith of the whole people, and constituted a continuous standard of national purpose. The watchwords were "rugged individualism," "our manifest destiny," and "the land of promise."

Now in a time of acute economic, financial and political crisis democratic principles are themselves being questioned. Congress and the whole representative system have been discredited. Central Government has never evoked much enthusiasm, and the average American was largely indifferent to the profession of politics. Now there is much active, and almost combative, dislike. Under the slow pressure of standardisation the old rugged individualism has become a smooth and unadventurous thing. With 12,000,000 unemployed, or more, the idea of boundless opportunity has been discredited, and the Americans are faced with the unpleasant realisation that they have landed themselves with a vast alien population which they cannot employ, and which may become increasingly difficult to absorb. Stringent regulations have been necessary to restrict immigration, and thus America has ceased to be the great and hospitable country offering asylum to all who wished to escape from the tyranny of the Old World. The Americans are questioning some of their old ideas about Europe. They see that in England there is a large measure of personal liberty, that those holding radical views are not subject to the same suspicions and restrictions as in the United States, and that political life in Great Britain is not subject to the corruption, egoism and incompetence which have marked so much of the politics of their own land.

In thus wandering between two worlds — one dead, the other not yet born —the Americans have turned to President Roosevelt and attributed to him qualities of inspired leadership. The President attained to almost theocratic prestige in the first weeks of his Presidency, and he has been helped to maintain this prestige by the contempt with which Congress is regarded by many Americans. Members of Congress are thought by many to be vain, localised, jealous, ignorant and corrupt. Formerly the Americans believed in the leaders of finance and industry; to-day this confidence has been largely dispelled. Even the expert seems to have lost prestige.

It is not easy to say where the centre of American opinion really resides.. There is a vast difference between the opinions of bankers and business men, the intellectuals of New York and Boston, and the inhabitants of the vast plains of the Middle WestEducated Americans are interested in world conditions. Much space is given to foreign news in the leading newspapers, and many special reviews and quarterlies reach a standard in dealing with foreign affairs seldom equalled even in Europe. Yet there is also a body of Middle West opinion interested mainly in local affairs, to which every foreigner is someone steeped in original sin. There is a decided contrast between the intellectual and the ordinary man. The University Faculties are favouring economic planning, which is a form of State Socialism, while the average farmer merely wishes to go back to things as they were. He is tending to become more insular, while the intellectuals are tending to think more internationally. The future of America will depend largely on which of these tendencies will, prevail.