Roosevelt's Second Inaugural
The second inaugural address which President Roosevelt delivered on Wednesday followed great pre- cedents—Lincoln's and Wilson's among them. It was conspicuous for its absence of any mention of foreign affairs, except for the customary reference to the United States as " the good neighbour," and consisted of an eloquent and emphatic declaration of the President's resolve to go forward, along the lines of the New Deal, in the fight against privilege and the defence of the economically oppressed. The address was the call of a leader, and the goal to be attained was marked out clearly—" the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much ; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little " —but how the obstacles in the way of its attainment are to be surmounted is left obscure. The President's references to the Constitution of 1787, whose 150th anniversary is this year being celebrated, could not obliterate the memory of the use made of that Constitu- tion during the President's first term to frustrate all the President's cherished purposes. The question whether the Constitution must he amended, or whether it can in some way be circumvented in Mr. Roosevelt's second term as it could not in his first term remains.
* *
Previous page
