BACK TO THE WALL

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 31, 6 February 1936, Page 13

BACK TO THE WALL

POLITICAL TUMULT

ROOSEVELT'S STORMY PATH

ELECTION YEAR FERVOUR

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

NEW YORK, January 11,

Election year, which presages much tumult and shouting, finds President F/josevelt with his back to the wall, sorely .beset by enemies and criticsRepublicans, Conservatives, Townsends, Coughlins, War Veterans, State Righters, Dissident Democrats, Monetary Reformers. Yet, in spite of them all, the odds are in his favour, chiefly for two reasons: they all supported him in the crisis of 1933, and public opinion will give him a chance to administer the post-depression reconstruction period. In the babel of protesting voices, the loudest are those which would protect the Constitution against further attacks. But they can spare their lungs; the Constitution is safe in the hands of its present sentries, the Supreme Court, as witness the fervour with which they consigned to the charnel house of laws the N.R.A., the Gold Clause, Collective Bargaining (by Labour), and State Control of Utilities, and now the sole remaining pillar of the New Deal, the A.A.A., designed to help the farmers. By a fateful coincidence, the letters A.A.A. now assume their military definition—The End. With a determination to clear away the mess, the people are demanding that the Budget be balanced, though, due to the c&nce of the billions, the task may not be consummated in three years. They see a far greater measure of recovery in countries that have done so: Great Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand. South Africa, Argentina, Denmark, and Sweden. Legislation based on un-American principles must go. From a free people, Americans have become a nation of overseers. The President favoured the under-dog,' yet there are eleven millions out of work today. At the other end of the social scale, private enterprise is throttled by Government control: The export trade of these United States is only 47 per cent, of the 1923-25 average. There are no "higher incomes" left to tax; lower salaries and wages must bear part of the cost of setting the fiscal house in order, after the orgy of the New Deal. TOWNSEND AND COUGHLIN. The President disappointed his supporters as well as critics by offering no constructive suggestion as to future policy in his Message to Congress. He merely contented himself with defying the Republicans, calling them cowards, chaining them with creating an atmosphere of fear among the people, and challenging them to produce something more practicable than his New Deal. Whether he intends to relegislate the N.R.A. and its alphabetical fellows is left to conjecture. To the taunt that the nation is on the verge of bankruptcy, he replied that the taxation index is not yet as high as in Great Britain. The electorate will have plenty of diversion. Dr. Townsend has thrown his hat in the ring with the declaration that he will lead a third party, and expects to capture the Presidency for his Old Age Pension Plan, under which every person over sixty years will receive a pension of £40 a month, "that, will make of their last years a golden autumn, rather than a bleak winter." What the radio priest's intentions are do not seem clear at the moment. His Social Justice Party has dropped out of the spotlight. He continues his attacks on bankers and industrialists, and is endeavouring to make a breach in the American Federation of Labour. He has been toying with Social Credit since his silver reform campaign landed him" in a trap. He reached the peak of his oratory in demanding the remonetisation of silver, but terminated his campaign abruptly when the Secretary to the Treasury Mr Morgenthau, bluntly disclosed that 500£00 ounces of silver were held by Father rmitrhlin's private secretary._