Mr. Roosevelt's New Congress The lines of immediate political developments
in the United States will be set by President Roosevelt's message to Congress, and since that will not be delivered till this issue of The Spectator has appeared comment on it must necessarily be deferred. But one essential feature of the situation may be noted. The Congress which is now opening its first session was, unlike its predecessor, elected after the New Deal had been in operation fbi' over a year, and it was in the light of that that the President's Democratic Party gained its over- whelming victory. For the next few 'months therefore the President may expect to get from the two Houses anything he may ask. He has foreshadowed legislation regarding armament firms, but that is likely to be deferred till the Senate Commission and the special committee appointed by Mr. Roosevelt have got further with their work. A Senator from Idaho is to move a resolution inviting the President to take the United States into the League of Nations, but it will more than satisfy expectations on this side if he takes them into the Permanent Court of International Justice and secures authority to give an undertaking that America will not so press her rights as neutral as to frustrate steps that may be taken by the League of Nations against a covenant-breaker. But domestic affairs will necessarily bulk much larger than foreign, conspicuous in that field being, according to rumour, a vast public works programme and an unemployment insurance scheme on the British modelT–unless the two are to be regarded as alternatives.
* * * *
Previous page
