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Show President Roosevelt's Message PRESIDENT ROOSEVELTS annual message to congress Wednesday was not a very, lm-j lm-j pressive document. I Its best features were those which dealt with the nation's foreign policy and this government's govern-ment's Interest in an international program looking toward world peace. Its poorest was the attempt to drape a cloak cf foreign crisis over domestic problems, and with a plea for the need of national unity in this time of world stress to strike at opposition to Internal policies and new deal failures. Few Americans will disagree with the sentiments sen-timents expressed by the president In regard to war, the good neighbor policy, and the American Ameri-can government's desire for peace. Hli warning hi Die wuild. "We lexugnlie the practical fact that with modern weapons and modern conditions, modern man can no longer live a civilized life if we are to go back to the practice) of wars and conquests of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries' should be read and pondered by all civilized peoples. His statement: "We In all the Americas are 1 coming to the realization that we can retain our respective nationalities without, at the same time, threatening the national existence of our neighbors,'' typifies the example in peaceful relations which the new world is giving to the old, setting pattern which may yet bear fruit In international affairs. His declaration: "I emphasize the leadership which this nation can take when the time comes for renewal of world peace" epitomizes the policy of the Roosevelt administration in a critical criti-cal period for world affairs, which has had, nd we believe will have, the general support of the American people. The president's announcement that the 1940 budget will provide reduced expenditures In practically all Hems except national defense Is an Indication of returning sanity In national expenditures which long has been needed. Whether that same approval can be extended to the proposal that additional taxes be levied to offset the extra defense expenditures, and thus permit reduction of the deficit to the full extent of other government economies, is questionable. ques-tionable. It will depend to a considerable extent on Just WHERE the taxes are to be levied, and how great an additional tax drag thereby will be placed on the nation's already overburdened business. Considering the nation's major domestic problem unemployment the president painted paint-ed the situation as optimistically as possible, but still recognized the seriousness of the problem. prob-lem. But when he said that unemployment of millions "remains symptom of a number of difficulties In our economic system not yet ad- . Justed" he makes us quake in our boots. I What further tinkering with the nation's economic system has he up his sleeve? Haven't we had enough experiments at the expense of ' the nation's business and industrial machine already? Aren't wc justified after seven years m believing that perhaps our difficulties regarding re-garding unemployment are caused by faults in our present political rather than our economic system? And when Mr. Roosevelt pleads lor "national "na-tional unity," assails "doctrines which set group gainst group . . . class against class," pleads lor "peace among ourselves" and attacks "overstatement, "over-statement, bitterness, vituperation, and the beating of drums" as "hurtful In the domestic ecene," we cannot but wonder if those same fine Ideals wouldn't have been equally appropriate appro-priate for the Roosevelt new deal to follow back in the days when the government Itself was fomenting national disunity, class hatred and Internal conflict by all sorts of overstatement, i bitterness, vituperation and drum-beating. God knows America needs unity. It's needed It for a long time. But It must be a unity of agreement and concord, not a unity of fear and ' force It must be a unity In faith and In purpose, pur-pose, not necessarily In policy and in program. Wc can disagree as Individuals over methods, meth-ods, while being united as a people as to ends. It is not the unity of dictatorial regimentation or demagogic emotionalism that we need in America, but the unity of a free people, strong In the faith of democracy and cemented In the bonds of a social system which we know has no Mer. |