Roosevelt Attacked

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 248, 21 October 1935, Page 11

Roosevelt Attacked

CELEBRATION INCIDENTS JABRING NOTE STRUCK NEW YORK, Sept. 25. The Constitution of the United States was signed on September 17, 3757. Tho anniversary is celebrated each year with “exercises,” intended to imbue tho. present generation with a love of American ideals of liberty. Jn the 1935 celebration was a jarring note, as speakers in different parts of tho country warned the people that the constitution was enduugcrcd by the actions of President Roosevelt and his Administration.

The ovation rendered tho former President, Mr. Herbert Hoover, at the Californian Exhibition when ho issued this note of warning had in it tho elements of the revolt against tho Administration that has been rapidly spreading. Mr. Hoover said there was cause for anxiety and concern, and emphasised the signficanco of the Bill of Eights as tho real safeguard of American liberty. Mr. Hoover’s address caught the fancy of a large crowd gathered from all parts of tho United States. His prepared speech was punctuated with applause of a volume not experienced since he was at White House. Especially was this so when he attacked dictatorship and declared: "Men are’in despair, surrendering their freedom for false promises of economic security.”

“Sapping of Safeguards” Making his charge directly at the Roosevelt regime, Mr. Hoover said that liberty never died from direct attack, but from encruchment, and disregard of safeguards. "Its destruction,” he said, “can be no less potent from ignorance or desire to find short cuts to jump over some immediate pressure. In our country repudiation by the Government of its obligations; centralisation of authority into the Federal Government at the expenso of local government, the building up of huge bureaucracies, coercion or intimidation of citizens, are the same sort of first sappings of safeguards of human rights that have taken place in other lands.”

At Chicago, President Roosevelt and his “Brain Trust” were openly charged with attempting to destroy the constitution. A Democrat deader, who denounces the New Deal, ex-Senator James A. Reed, assorted they had placed on the Supremo Court tho entire responsibility for observing, upholding and defending the constitution. “The patriot writers of tho great Charter,” ho said, “knew the methods and weapons employed by tyrants, and with infinito care forbade their use here. Understanding that •power feeds on power,’ they wrote a constitution of strict limitations, and prescribed that every office-holder, from the President of the United States to a Federal Court bailiff, should swear to observe, uphold and defend it.”

Further Powers For Executive President Roosevelt did not make • any public utterance, but it is believed : he was aware of the tenor of tho pronouncement made by one of his Cabinet, Mr. Roper, who hinted at an amendment of tho constitution, to give the Executive further powers in the event of an emergency. Tho emergency was interpreted as being prospective action by tho Supreme Court iu regard to phases of the New Deal on which it has to deliver judgment.’ “Unless the'lessons taught by the depression go unheeded, as war lessons generally have, and unless clearly evident cconimic signs and portents are f largely wrong, this is a question,” said • Mr. Roper, “that must bo answered during the next decade if our present ' economic and government system is to , endure.”