Nelson Evening Mail THURSDAY, JANUARY 13, 1944 ROOSEVELT'S POLICY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 13 January 1944, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail THURSDAY, JANUARY 13, 1944 ROOSEVELT'S POLICY

BECAUSE 1944 is election year in the United States it is not surprising to find President Roosevelt’s message to Congress already construed as the first shot in the campaign. In it there was, as there was intended to be, much for home consumption, for the President’s annual message to Congress is the equivalent of our Speech-from-the-Throne. Mr Roosevelt set out his recommendations for winning the war and maintaining the home economy and, in so doing, stressed principles which all the United Nations should heed because each is striving to reach the same goal while keeping the ship of State on an even keel. Plain speaking and even castigation were meted out while American soothing syrup was conspicuous by its absence. President Roosevelt has a happy knack of interpreting his proposals in terms of the wants and aspirations of the common man. This time, again, as it has long been in his liberal administration, the supreme objective which he held up was security—security against aggressors, economic security, social security and moral security. That summation covers the fundamentals of human life. “Peaceful progress of the people” he likes to style it and he brought back from his “down-to-earth” talks with Mr Churchill and Marshal Stalin the assurance that they too are eager to promote by all means in their power the welfare and happiness of the common man and woman within their own countries. This is not merely stage talk. So often has “victory for the common man” been used to express the essence of democratic ambitions that it may begin to sound like a platitude, yet humanity can have no broader or surer basis on which to move forward towards better days. But the President, like the distinguished company of leaders he kept at Cairo and Teheran, is anxious that, while training his gaze on the horizon, the common man does not get out of step or slacken his pace in prosecuting the task in hand: that of winning the war in the shortest possible time. Bearing this in mind he characterises his legislative proposals as a war-winning programme and invites their acceptance on that basis. So that there will be a niche for every one of the 130,000,000 ablebodied Americans to play his or her part, he wants to see enacted a National Service law, the machinery of which would be determined by Congress. That type of legislation is now familiar to New Zealand but we can all realise the magnitude of the task involved in applying it to a vast nation like the United States. The idea is to get a better line-up of effort and provide—by direction—scope for those millions of Americans, who, the President says, are not even yet performing any worthwhile war duties. Along with that are certain other economic measures designed to allow the home front to take the increasing strain of war without getting seriously out of gear. It is the philosophy of control, having its basis in equity. The President instances how sectional demands can

make inroads into stabilisation and so produce repercussions which threaten economic balance. He also seeks once more to scotch the bogey that, if a general attempt is made to raise world living standards, this can be accomplished only at the expense of those nations who already have high standards. The contention that, to pull others up, someone must be pulled down, is a widespread fallacy. Living standards and puchasing power can be made to march hand in hand so that, from the hardheaded business viewpoint alone, a global rise in both is desirable. The President calls this reasoning just plain common sense of the kind that the leaders talked at Cairo and Teheran. It lays the emphasis on first principles which are so elementary as to be often overlooked and to which world legislators need to return.