Evening post. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1935. OUR MODERN CATILINES

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 98, 27 April 1935, Page 8

Evening post. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1935. OUR MODERN CATILINES

Nearly 2000 years ago Lucius Sergius Catiline, author of the famous Catiline conspiracy and leader of the resulting revolution, was killed by the army of the Roman Senate. It, is worth noting, in view of what has recently happened, that history holds that the object of the Catiline conspiracy was "the cancellation of debts, the proscription of the wealthy, and the distribution among the conspirators of all offices of honour and emolument." History, it is notorious, repeats itself; and many people love 'to look into history, ancient and modern, to see mirrored there the thing that is to come. Among these students of the historical looking glass is BrigadierGeneral Hugh S. Johnson, former Administrator of President Roosevelt's N.R.A., and known sometimes in America as the man who created three million jobs and lost his own. General Johnson, after a careful look before and after, informed the United States, in the, course of a public address on March 4, that he had discovered in America not one Catiline, but two, and one of them a member of the Senate itself. This one, he made clear, was Senator Huey Long, from Louisiana, formerly Governor of that State, and hailed .by all and sundry as Louisiana's dictator. What is Mr. Long doing that constitutes him an American Catiline? General Johnson's answer is that, as a rebel Democrat, Long is undermining the country's support of .President Roosevelt—and indirectly is playing the game of the Republican Old Guard—by proposing an impossible thing, a capital levy —a taking from the rich and a giving to the poor. By putting'a £400,000 to £600,000 limit on private fortunes, Mr. Long promises' to give each deserving family property worth £1000 (5000 dollars). To that extent the Senator from Louisiana is proposing "the proscription of the wealthy." Far, however, from doing this under cover as a conspirator, he'has proclaimed it from the house-tops. He calls it the "Share-our-Wealth" campaign. The number of people already enrolled in "Share-our-Wealth societies in the United States is said to be several million. Huey Long tells them that nothing stands between them and their goal save ''the Roosevelt depression," which is worse than "the Hoover depression." Rallying to the support of the President, the ex-leader of N.R.A. attacks this demagogy in what he considers to be the only language that has any attacking force. Economic, refutation, says. General Johnson, is hopelessly handicapped. If the economists were not put out of court by the long Latinised words they use, then— "Every man a king" and "5000 dollars a year for everybody" would draw the proper "Oh yeah" from nine people out of ten. But when it comes to a fight between the economists and the Longs the mass listens to the one whose talk it understands. Here is the Long appeal as summed up by Johnson, who assumes for the moment Long's Louisiana "cane brake", drawl: Ahm not against de Constitution. Ahm fo' de Constitution. Ahm not against p'ivate p'ope'ty. Ahm. fo' p'ivate p'ope'ty. All mah plan saysis "tax 'em down—till nobody has mo' dan six million dollahs capital and one million dollahs income. Six million dollahs capital an' one million dollahs income is enough fo' any man!" There it is, "all rubbish"! But liow to prove it rubbish? The General hands to Catiline the prize, and does «o handsomely: There's language anybody can understand; and the tortured -talk and four-dollar words with which economists answer that baby is too much for about 99 per cent, of people including myself. .. . Who is going to attempt to tell any man why he ought not to have 5000 dollars a year if Huey can get it for him—or even why he shouldn't be a king? The fact is that nobody is answering Huey in language anybody can understand. He's getting away with it without a contest. But before the ink of the last sentence is dry, the General is out after Mr. Long, and the contest begins. The Senator from Louisiana is not merely Catiline, he is also Hitler. He has been Hitler in Louisiana, and aims to be the Hitler of the United States. From, another angle he is discovered to be Punchinello; and, yet again, the Mad Mullah. This is the kind of creature who has rebelled against Roosevelt and against the only policy that holds Americans together! His heresy is the Catilinian crime! Having cleared the way with such uneconomic vituperation, the General fired his economic bullet. To give every family 5000 dollars a year income, the total income of the United States would have to •be 150 billions, and if some had a million and so on down to 5000 dollars in the usual grades, as Huey proposes, it would have to be 500 billions, which is more than, twelve times' as much as it is and more than six times as much as it has ever been. Needless to add, this sentence epitomising the economic case did

not worry Mr. Long, but sonic of the other things did, with the result that he stirred up in the United Slates Senate a disturbance which, the newspapers agree, ranks among the best half-dozen rows that the history of the august Chamber records. His attack on Mr. Roosevelt and General Johnson was "so fierce that the Democratic leader, Senator Robinson, from Arkansas, declared that it was "lime that the manhood of the Senate" should assert itself against the Louisiana Senator's ignorant attempts to discredit the President. Senator Robinson remarked that Senator Long had installed "a puppet Governor" in Louisiana; and Senator Long noted that Senator Robinson had relatives oti the Arkansas pay-roll. Then someone said that sitting in ihe gallery was Senator Long's ."armed guard," after which the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate solemnly searched the gentleman referred to and found him gunless. But the "armed guard" is, it seems, no fable. Hurling "aints" and dropping "g's," Senator Long intimated that his armed guard was a reply to the alleged employment in Congress's service of one Parker: "What about this thug you've got here in Congress?" he yelled; "this man Parker! Witnesses have said he was coming here to kill me. What do you want to do? You want to say I must be murdered here?" This bit of melodrama has given the fight something of the Catiline complexion, but hot quite in the sense that General Johnson implied. Keenly excited by the Catiline story and by Senator Robinson's attempt to play Cicero, all America waited to hear Senator Long, get on the radio and blister General Johnson. But the result was an anticlimax. After a few words of not very pointed counterblast to the General, Senator Long devoted his radio time to pleading,' in his own inimitable way, for the "Share-our-Wealth" campaign. The Johnson attack had given him a radio chance —"a nation-wide listening-in"— such as he had long wanted, and he devoted the golden moments-not to his attacker but to "every man a king!" The general verdict is that "Huey" is af shrewd campaigner. . . . And now, as to the . second Catiline? There is not much more to be said, for that part of the story is also in its way an anti-climax. The second man indicted by General Johnson was Father Coughlin, the "radio priest," who has embarrassed the Roosevelt Administration by his advocacy of, inflation and his apparent approval of the Long policy. But Press reports state that after the tumult and the shouting in the Senate had died away, Father Coughlin by radio repeated his slogan, "Roosevelt or Ruin," and intimated that he not only supported President Roosevelt but would continue to support him. And, with that announcement, speculations on a great third party headed by "Punchinello and the Priest" disappear for the present from the headlines, and people are. left wondering whether the Johnson cry, "the Roosevelt policy is in deadly danger," has a solid foundation or whether the General has exaggerated the" hold that arbitrary wealthsharing has secured on the mentality of Americans.