WITHOUT PARALLEL

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18208, 2 October 1933, Page 9

WITHOUT PARALLEL

U.S. RECOVERY PLAN ALTERNATIVE TO CHAOS MR. F. MILNER’S OPINION (Per Press Association.) Auckland, this day. “The N.R.A. economists are of tho opinion that individual acquisitiveness lias' gone for ever, and that the paramount. consideration of the future, is community advantage. They hold that this is not' an isolated incident, lint is some.thing indicative Of the revolution in Hie social order,” said Air. Frank Milner, 0.M.0., rector of Waitaki High School, who returned to-day after representing Rotarians at the international convention at Boston. Ho afterwards attended the Institute of Pacific Rela-. tions conference at Banff, Canada, and (lien engaged in a lecture tour throughout the United States. lie said the American people wero voluntarily allowing themselves to bo disciplined because they believed that President Roosevelt represented honest leadership. After referring to Mr. Roosevelt’s immediate action on taking office, Mr. Milner said it really had been an example of how democracy can function in a crisis by means of a benovelent despotism with constitutional safeguards. America was showing how democracy, by a system of paternal legislation, can be preserved in toto. In the past, the United States had been most tenacious of individual rights and resentful of any form of dictation, but under the N.R.A., people had cheerfully agreed to observo tlie hours of work and rates of pay prescribed by this new form of Government.

R, was the most extraordinary spectacle the world had yet seen. It was a via media, between fascism and communism. No monarch in the world had sucji unlimited powers as Mr. Roosevelt. They were willingly given, and _ the people appeared to be amply satisfied with what was being done, and it couldlx* strictly said that it was the will of the people. When Air. Roosevelt took office, the unemployed numbered 15,000,000. Five millions since had been given employment, and it whs estimated 4.000,000 or' 5,000,000 more would be employed by next February. Mr. Milner said the most dramatic incident at the Banff conference was a full-dress debate on the N.R.A. between British economists, _ including Professor Gregory, who scathingly attacked it, and three Americans who defended it. He concluded that tho British economists had failed to. attach a proper valuation to the dominant human or psychological factors. It had to be re- ’ membered that the American people had suffered such a stunning, paralysing, shock that, above all else, it was necessary to re-establish confidence and a sense of security. Lawlessness was' imperilling the security of the, nation. ; It was impossible to face another winter with 15,000,000 unemployed. The magnetic leadership of the President immediately produced positive and beneficial results.