DIFFICULT DAYS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 152, 30 June 1938, Page 10

DIFFICULT DAYS

PROBLEMS IN U.S.A.

"NEW DEAL" STIMULUS

LOST IMPETUS

Some aspects of the problems confronting President Roosevelt, and the United States, were dealt with by Mr. a S. K. Ratcliffe, the well-known English " lecturer and journalist, in an address to the New Zealand Club today, j. Mr. Ratcliffe said that he proposed to deal with the difficulties confronting the President, the state of the £ economic depression in America, and the interesting outlook in regard to \ the coming Congressional elections. s President Roosevelt was in ijie midst of a complicated mass of difficulties which had accumulated more and more rapidly since the beginning of his second term of office. Every one had recognised how his "New Deal" had given an impetus to |he ' spirit of the country, and how it had raised the spirit of the American 1 people from the pit of depression. At the end of the previous President's regime the Americans had commenced ; to lose faith in their country and in i the American system. Roosevelt had . changed the mental climate of the , country. When he was elected again in 1936 he had an enormous majority and the country was still feeling the stimulus, but there was a good deal to make the American people anxious. The basic industries werejnot as healthy as they might have been, the agricultural outlook was alarming, and an enormous amount was being spent on emergency public works and unemployment relief. CHALLENGE TO SUPREME COURT. Then the President turned aside in a way that surprised the American people, and challenged the electorate on a problem always dangerous to an American President—a Constitutional issue. Roosevelt was a great experimentalist, and early in 1937 he plunged into a controversy over the Supreme Court. Mr. Ratcliffe said he believed the action to be partly explained by the difficulty the American President had in the" continuity of his advisers and in .the absence of a secure civil service. Out of the storm, however, there was a constitutional education. Mr. Ratcliffe stressed the importance of such an action on the part of the President, and pointed, out that the United States had the oldest form of administration in existence. In the past 50 years every country except the United States had changed its form of Government, but the United States, which was the oldest republic, had the oldest form of Government, and it was regarded as something like Holy Writ. Political arguments could be clinched in America by what George Washington or Abraham Lincoln had : said, whereas people in England did i not regard the recorded words of past ( leaders as always worthy of the , highest respect. Woodrow Wilson had j failed in 1919 because some Americans believed what Washington had written ! about entangling alliances towards the end of the eighteenth century. Roosevelt lost in his challenge on the Supreme Court and his prestige, was damaged for a time. 1 Mr. Ratcliffe went on to refer how the President had regained his prestige through his "fireside talks," ■ and said that he had noticed how the, , President's prestige had recovered to a large extent. THE ECONOMIC DEPRESSION. The ■ present . economic trouble in America was much more than a "business recession," as it was sometimes spoken of, and from the latter months of 1937 it had had the appearance of a grave general depression, and in some of the great American cities there was serious unemployment In Cleveland he had been informed that about 400,000 were dependent on relief measures out of a population of 800,000 or 900,000. The depression would be serious for the President, and serious for his party in the coming elections for the Houses of Congress, and if the President did not have a secure majority it would affect the legislative programme of his last two years of office. Mr. Ratcliffe considered that though there had been talk of the President standing for a third term, he did not think that such a matter would eventuate, but he expressed the opinion that the President would like to select the Democrat candidate whose views would be sympathetic to the New Deal.

I Mr. Ratcliffe said that the New Deal [policy had broken the Democrat Party. (The outcome might be an alliance of ' the two great parties, which would make room in the new Democrat Party for the forces of organised labour.

It was said that President Roosevelt had lost his personal charm, but at the same time it had to be remembered that there was no public man to challenge the position he held, and he was a public man who had led his country through five or six years of extreme difficulty. In conclusion, Mr. Ratcliffe referred to the apparent contradiction of the United States in its dislike of entanglements, and in its improved outlook in regard to co-operation with England. "The future of the world will be indefinite if these two great branches of the human family do noti come closer together," he said, "and if they do, there is virtually nothing that cannot be accomplished."