Evening Post. THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1934. ROOSEVELT'S REBUFF

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 75, 29 March 1934, Page 8

Evening Post. THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1934. ROOSEVELT'S REBUFF

After a brief interval in the supply of important news from America, Washington sends us today a report of a very unpleasant character. What was reported on March 14 to be "the first, important legislative reverse that President Roosevelt has suffered" has been repeated in. a manner which seriously aggravates the blow to his personal prestige, the difficulties of his taskj and. the dangers of the country. That hideous spectre of the veterans' bonus which he succeeded in dodging throughout the election campaign, and which during the triumphant march of his first session he seemed to have laid, has reappeared, and it is quite in accordance with the ironies both of die stage and of real life that this reappearance should have taken place at the most inconvenient possible time and after the hero had repented of his weakness and resolutely devoted himself to good works. The exact size- of the majority by which on March ,12 the House of Representatives defied the President and voted for the immediate payment to so-called veterans of 2,200,000,000 'dollars was unfortunately not reported. We were perely told that the majority was overwhelming. How overwhelming" is the vote by which that defiance has now been repeated is revealed by the figures 'of the division—3lo to 72—a majority of: more than four to.one. . . When contrasted with the vote of 360 to 40 by which the same House carried the President's Money Bill at the beginning of the session, the vote of 310 to 72 which has now added 2,200,000,000 dollars to his- deficit of 9,000,000,000 dollars makes his defeat appear not merely overwhelming, but • crushing. But Mr. Roosevelt's resilience has been such that the second of these epithets is riot to be lightly used. Whatever the Constitution allows and courage and resource render possible he may be relied upon to do/Measured by the party test, the figures present a less crushing but still astonishing and depressing appearance. The composition of the House of Representatives as elected on November 8,1932, was: Democrats, 313; Republicans, 117; Farmer-Labour, 5. By a remarkable coincidence, the number of the members who1 were returned as the President's supporters is njow almost exactly equalled by the number which voted against him on this division, the figures being 313 and 310 respectively. As two of the 72 who supported him on this occasion are Republicans, the President had the support of only 70 of his own party, while more than 200 of them, representing ,at least two-thirds of the majority, voted against him. That about three-fourths of a Government's' supporters should have voted against it on a measure of capital importance would under any conditions be an astonishing event. That a majority of 9 to 1 should at the same time have been converted in • about two months into a minority of about 1 to 4-J must.be. almost unprecedented. , 'Under a Constitution of the British type such a state of affairs could of course have but one. outcome. A British Government would indeed have escaped this second humiliation because the first one would have put it out of office. But. on this occasion at any rate the fixity of the American Constitution, which has often so grievously hampered the powers of the Executive, the Legislature, and the nation, is proving an unmitigated blessing. The disastrous chaos into which not only the United States but a large part of the outside world also would have been plunged if the result of either, of these divisions on the bonus Bill had been to put the President out, of office and to precipitate both Presidential and Congressional elections is too appalling to contemplate. For the American, indeed, a dictatorship would perhaps have provided the likeliest escape from anarchy, but there is fortunately no need to pursue the speculation. In spite of these divisions President and Congress stand firm ,for the full periods for which they were respectively elected, and no future division or other event can shorten these periods by a single day. . Here is something for which the whole world lias reason to be thankful. But fortunately we are not limited to this cold and negative comfort.

Though the mana of the President and the credit of the country have been severely shaken, and a complete recovery seems beyond hope in either case, it is by no means certain that the full measure of the disaster which is threatened will be' realised. To overrule a President's veto a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Congress is required. It was for this purpose that the House of Representatives has been divided for the second time on the bonus Bill. The 310 votes in favour of the Bill were nearly sixty more, than were needed, but the second vote of the Senate has still to be taken. When the result of the first division in the House was reported we were told that the Bill was not likely to become law, as the Senate was not expected to give it a twp-thirds majority. But tins was more than a fortnight ago, and as to, what extent the chances have changed in the interval we are left in the dark. A comparison of the two divisions in the House might have afforded a clue, but, as we have said, the figures of the first division were not reported. The attitude of, the House as reported today is a more precarious criterion, but it is certainly impossible to derive any encouragement from it. The President's Message' was received with none of the customary applause, and as the vote proceeded, "frequent applause and jeers signified that well-known Democrats had voted against! or for, the President. In the end there was an outburst of shouting, back-slapping, and hand-clapping in which the galleries joined." "The worst trimming'any President has ever received at the hands of the House" was the gleeful comment of the Republican leader. His party's normal prejudices in favour of "sound money" had apparently yielded to the desire to get a slap at the President by the support of a measure which is flagrantly unsound, both financially and morally. We were told on the previous occasion that "the inflationary nature of the bonus measure" is attracting the greatest attention, but in the House the attention has proved so Highly favourable that it is natural to fear a similarnendency, in the Senate.