7 JANUARY 1938, Page 6

President Roosevelt on Democracy The domestic aspects of President Roosevelt's

address to Congress on Monday are discussed in a leading article on a later page. For the world outside the United States the few sentences the President devoted to foreign policy make an equal demand on attention. The statement they contained was brief, well-considered and wholly salutary. Mr. Roose- velt spoke of " provocations " in the face of which peace had been preserved thanks to the restraint of the American people. The point of that remark will certainly not be lost by the Power to which it was addressed, and that the President's more general observations on the tendency for disregard of treaty- obligations to coincide with " the surface trend away from democratic forms of government," have struck home is demon- strated by the emotions they have stirred in Germany and Italy. There could indeed be no misunderstanding. Peace, in the President's view, " is most greatly jeopardised in and by those nations where democracy has been discarded or never developed," but he holds, like General Smits, that the retreat from democracy is only temporary. No more must be read into Mr. Roosevelt's words than they plainly import. But they mean this at the lowest, that the President is con- tinuing resolutely, and to all appearance with success, to imbue his people with a sense of the community of ideals and interests between democratic States, above all as guardians of the peace _ of the world. He could render the world no greater service. * * *