Washington Post and Scripps-Howard Newspapers, by Felix Morley and George B. Parker

It is unfortunate for the Nation that there seems to be no way of controlling that "swelling prosperity of the spirit" which President Roosevelt senses to be abroad in the land and which bubbled so ebulliently throughout his speech at Atlanta yesterday.

For what stands out as certain in an uncertain world is that this country's climb back to the stability which is the basis of progress is going to be a slow and arduous task, to be achieved only by co-operative effort, rigid self-discipline and subordination of personal ambitions to national well-being. And those are the factors which Mr. Roosevelt is most disposed to ignore, regardless of his feeling that "progress" is a better word than "recovery," whatever that assertion may mean to a convalescent.

In a purely partisan declamation it is perhaps permissible to refer to March 3, 1933—the day before Mr. Roosevelt was inaugurated—as a day when "the mechanics of civilization came to a dead stop." One might be similarly tolerant with a stump speaker who defines criticism of reckless deficit financing as attempts "to dictate to the Administration and to the Congress." One might be similarly tolerant with a stump speaker who defines criticism of reckless deficit financing as attempts "to dictate to the Administration and to the Congress." But from the President of the United States something finer than such feverish flights of fancy should properly be expected. He is, after all, not merely a candidate for re-election: he is also the responsible executive of the entire Nation. As such, something more than a bitterly partisan attitude in his public addresses is properly to be expected.

It is tragic that evidences of real statesmanship in Mr. Roosevelt's addresses should lie the exception rather than the rule. But that such is the case was again demonstrated in the Atlanta speech. At no place did it get to grips with the essential problems of the day; at no point did it oven consider the possibility that all of the intelligence, patriotism and integrity of purpose in this country are not confined to the group of archangels at present controlling the Nation's destiny; and in no respect did it provide a basis of confidence in the future more substantial than Mr. Roosevelt’s sense of "a swelling prosperity of the spirit."

The more assertively self-righteous the leader, the more incumbent upon him to be incontestably right. In yesterday’s speech the President asserted that "many of the great bankers of the United States" told him, in the spring of 1933, that "the country could safely stand a national debt of between fifty-five and seventy billion dollars."  The clear inference is that, compared with this astronomical figure, the nearly nine billions of additional public debt so far piled up by the New Deal is not worth noticing. But before that inference can be accepted the names of those who made this extraordinary statement to the President must be made public. Half disclosures of this sort, clearly attempting to depict "the bankers" as an irresponsible class, are a most unfair indictment from the Chief of State. The President's sense of justice, so vivid in some directions, should show him that this general charge needs chapter and verse substantiation.

Similar clarification is needed in Mr. Roosevelt’s very confusing observations on the employment situation. After a hackhanded swipe at those who, "careless of the truth and regardless of scruple," have attacked the WPA program as foredoomed to failure, the President announces that on Wednesday "there wore 3,125,000 persons at work on various useful projects throughout the Nation." The difference between this number and 3,500,000, he added, "have received orders to report to work on projects already under way or ready to be started."

The wording is carefully obscure, but the meaning conveyed is that 3,500,000 unemployed have been or are about to be put to work by the WPA. According to the President's message to Congress, last January 4, there were then "3,500,000 employable people who are on relief." Some of these have certainly found employment through the industrial revival—according to the Secretary of Labor about 350.000 thus found work last month alone. On top of this comes the present intimation that the WPA has achieved its full objective. So the only possible conclusion is that there is now a great deal less than no involuntary unemployment of able-bodied workers throughout the country. If that is really so. Mr. Hopkins has been unduly modest about the truly remarkable success of this experiment. Even at the risk of seeming "regardless of scruple" we vesture to suggest that the case is not quite as the President makes it appear.

Moreover, in the upward movement which is now happily apparent, a reasonably humble and contrite attitude, on the part of all classes in the community, is more desirable than that "swelling prosperity of the spirit" which serves to obscure awkward problems. Prior to the depression, the President rightly says, the Nation was living in a fool's paradise. There is more than a little evidence that he is now anxious to build up a similarly deceptive Eden in the minds of the electorate.

(Courtesy of The Washington Post.)

Within the neutrality limitations set by Congress the Administration, since Italy invaded Ethiopia, has done all that is possible in the way of assuring support for the efforts of the League of Nations to restrain an aggressor state. And nothing but encouragement for the application to Italy of effective sanctions can he gathered from the latest official statement that the United States "views with sympathetic interest the individual or concerted efforts of other nations lo preserve peace or to localize and shorten the duration of war."

Indeed the chief deficiency of the note dispatched on Saturday to the president of the League’s committee of co-ordination for sanctions is. paradoxically, that it has implications of undue strength rather than weakness. The message emphasizes that the policy of the United States Government is to discourage American trade with the belligerents. But it takes no actual steps, as the League members are doing, to prevent the sale of basic munitions to the nation duly defined as aggressor.

In other words it intimates to the League members that their best course would be to establish a naval blockade of Italy, which would automatically give real meaning to the Administration’s warning to American citizens that they trade with either of the belligerents "at their own risk." Without a blockade there is, in this war, no risk whatsoever for American citizens in trade with Italy. On the contrary, to the extent that League sanctions close other trade channels, there is an inevitable tendency to make this country a principal source of supply for the materials the aggressor needs to wage successful war.

Our present policy, therefore, tends to make economic sanctions both ineffective, and injurious to the nations applying them. Because of this, plus the intimation that we would tacitly indorse a League blockade of Italy rutting off all trade, the Administration's note encourages Geneva to proceed to more drastic measures. A blockade, however, would very possibly be interpreted by Italy as an act of war, with the result that hostilities instead of being localized in Africa would spread to the entire Mediterranean area.

This is the dilemma into which a mandatory neutrality policy, paying no attention to the realities of the situation, has forced the Administration. To insure a rigid neutrality we practically suggest that the League states risk open war with Italy. We abandon all claim in that moral leadership in opposing flagrant treaty violations for which former Secretary Stimson called in a radio broadcast last week. We reveal ourselves before the world as a nation which, having made many flue gestures for peace, is in reality unwilling to take any constructive step to secure it. And. incidentally, the Administration shows itself none too observant of that pledge in the Democratic platform of 1932 which advocated that the Kellogg pact "be made effective by provision for consultation and conference in case of threatened violation of treaties."

All this is the more unfortunate because independent American support for present League efforts could so easily, without the slightest risk to this country, speedily insure a negotiated and reasonable settlement of the Italo-Ethiopian dispute. Mandatory neutrality, on the other hand, puts us in the invidious position of opposing in behalf of the aggressor the fifty-odd nations which after scrupulously fair inquiry have found Italy guilty of treaty violation. And seemingly the only way out of this dilemma for the Administration would be for the League to lake most drastic action against the aggressor, since under the present abortive neutrality law we don’t have to be neutral if the war spreads.

There is certainly no cause for pride in a neutrality policy which encourages us to profit from the self-sacrificing refusal of other nations to sell basic munitions to an aggressor slate. There is no cause for pride in a neutrality policy which in effect urges others to blockade Italy at risk of general war so that we can side against the aggressor without saying we are doing so. And least of all is there cause for pride in the mixture of sloppy thinking, hysterical pacifism and isolationist unrealism which have combined to create this invidious situation.

(Courtesy of The Washington Post.)

Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, with his wife and little son, has sailed for England with a view- of making a home there. The exact reason for their departure is not stated.

It does not need to be.

Undoubtedly one factor is the constant tension to which the couple have been subjected since the kidnapping of their firstborn. Also in the picture is the approaching execution of Bruno Hauptmann, who was convicted of that kidnapping. And in the background is the combination of all the harrowing experiences that have befallen the young aviator who soared to fame with his epoch-making transatlantic flight—morbid crowds, suffocating publicity, the ghastly tragedy at Hopewell, the suspense, the nightmare trial, the continuous threats to little Jon.

Only three generations ago Charles Lindbergh’s grandfather emigrated from Sweden to this country with his wife and little boy. With what high hopes they must have set sail for the land of promise. And the promise was for a time fulfilled. That little boy became a Member of Congress and father of the famous aviator. Now this Lindbergh in turn leads his small family back to the Old World, looking for privacy and peace. The cycle is complete; the moral for America is unmistakable.

(Courtesy of The Washington Post.)

Calling the pending tax bill a "hoax" and a "sterile political gesture," Senator Vandenberg concludes that "under any circumstances and at any time, a tax bill unrelated to budget legislation is bad legislation and wasted resources." "Our bills for the next fiscal year," he urges, "should be courageously reduced to the minimum permitted by our unavoidable necessities. Then our taxes should, if possible, balance this budget."

The importance ot studying and discussing the Administration's new tax proposals in connection with budgetary objectives was similarly stressed yesterday by Dr. Jules I. Bogen in the first of a series of articles appearing on the page opposite. Dr. Bogen agrees with Senator Vandenberg that it is a futile gesture to raise a few hundred million dollars in taxes as a means of meeting a serious budgetary problem. But unlike Senator Vandenberg, who advocates both retrenchment and a comprehensive system of new taxes to preserve financial solvency, Dr. Bogen undertakes to show how budgetary balance might be attained without imposing any new taxes.

If business recovery were to proceed until it reached the level of 1928, he says, revenue receipts from existing taxes probably would reach $6,000,000,000, an increase of $2,200,000,000 over the returns of the fiscal year 1935. Then, if the Government were to substitute direct relief for work relief and limit outlays to $300 per year for each of 3,500,000 unemployed persons, emergency expenditures would simultaneously he cut more than 50 percent. The result: a balanced budget with something left over for debt retirement.

In calling attention to the fiscal complications that will arise through creation of huge reserve funds under the social insurance legislation, Dr. Boson touches upon a subject to which Congress lias as yet paid virtually no attention. As the sums paid into the old-age insurance fund alone would amount to an estimated $36,000,000,000 by 1965, it is obvious that the Government need mnke no future provision to retirement of the outstanding public debt. Indeed the Secretary of the Treasury would find it difficult to invest these reserves in Government securities, as required by law, if debt retirement were to proceed. With appropriations for the stalling fund no longer necessary, a substantial slice would be cut from current budgetary appropriations.

Of course the happy solution of our budgetary problems which Dr. Bogen envisages as possible is baaed upon admittedly optimistic assumptions. Thus a speedy return to the limited allowances of direct relief after a lavish experiment in work relief would encounter bitter opposition. Moreover, the chances of a business recovery that would stand comparison with 1928 seem slim at the present time. Nevertheless, Congress will he forced eventually to effect drastic economies if it wants to avert governmental insolvency. And it can not begin too soon to relate the vital importance of business improvement to the budgetary situation.

Even if the outlook appears less roseate to most people than the picture suggested by Dr. Bogen's hypotheses, it is obviously not, as gloomy as it is often painted. Students of finance may not agree as to methods of procedure, but they know that the budget can he balanced if Congress has the courage to set about the task with serious intent.

(Courtesy of The Washington Post.)