WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?
THE prophets have once more been confuted, and Mr. Landon of Kansas City, instead of making a close fight of it for the Presidency of the United States, is, as an American tersely put it on Wednesday, hardly even an " also ran." President Roosevelt's triumph is unprecedented. Never has a President in the history of the Union 'carried as many States, or commanded as many votes in the Electoral College. It is well, indeed, as some corrective to the impression those facts create, to study the popular vote,' which is obviously .a much better criterion of the opinion of the electorate. Though the final figures are not available as we write it seems clear that they will show that at least three voters out of every five supported Mr. Roosevelt—a sufficiently decisive majority, but presenting never- theless a very different picture from the announce- ment that 46 States out of 48 and over 500 members of the Electoral College out of 531 are behind the President.
Many factors har=e gone to secure Mr. Roosevelt his triumph. The Republicans had a had candi- date, a bad record and a bad ease. Mr. Landon is personally estimable, but he has: given no sign of imagination or leadership, and in days when the faculty of speaking direct to fifty millions of electors by radio has introduced a totally new factor into political campaigning, the Republican candidate has shown himself an inept tyro matched against a past master. The past master, moreover, had a tale to tell. Every article of the New Deal pro- gramme may be open. to grave criticism ; . more than half of it may have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court ; the programme as a whole may represent a profligate expenditure of. public money ; but it has been the salvation . of millions of Americans in the financial hurricane that broke as Mr. Roosevelt was being inaugurated nearly four years ago. The Atherican lives on slogans, and he has consciously or subconsciously remembered two this week. Lincoln was re-elected because no wise men would swop horses when crossing a stream ; Franklin Roosevelt is re-elected for much the same reason. today. .-Wils.on was re-elected in 1916 because (up till then) " he kept us out of war " ; Franklin Roosevelt has kept millions of Americans • out .of- bankruptcyOr at any rate they think so. He has been the small man's friend, and the small man and the farmer and Labour have voted for him. He has . challenged . big business, which the Re- publicans represent, . and the Republicans have been swept away like frame-houses in a Mississippi flood.
Now that Mr. Roosevelt has got his endorsement —and by a demonstration of popular approval so overwhelming—what will he do with the new pOwer thus conferred on him? For his re-election, together with the return of a decisively Democratic House of Representatives, is not merely a vindication of -the President's first term but.a vote of: confidence that ensures him large freedom of action in the future. He no doubt has clear views as to.how to use that liberty both. in the domestic, and -the foreign field. His aim at :_home: -nutst . be . to... systematise and organise his New Deal policy. His strategy hitherto has been largely opportunist, and it is hard to see how it could have -been otherwise. In the economic storm that burst upon his country all that seemed possible was to stop one leak after another in the ship's hull as the water began pouring in.
And one after another his ameliorative measures were frustrated •by the decision of the Supreme Court that they 'infringed the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution r:.zsents an impreg- nable barrier to the develoPinent of an effective system of social services organised from the centre by the Federal Government. On the other hand, to leave the task to the States spells inevitable ineffectiveness, in view of the mobility of labour and the necessity for uniformity thioughout the UniOn. To amend the Constitution is a formidable business, but it is not impossible, as the amendments conferring votes on women and first instituting and then abolishing prohibition have shown in recent years. The President will . never have such an opportunity of freeing the White House and the Capitol from some of the trammels, of 1788 as the prestige of his present victory gives him, and it seems likely that in spite of the danger of raising the old States Rights issue again he will attempt some limited constitutional amendment.
But President Roosevelt's vision has always ranged far beyond the frontiers of the Union. Under him the United States has become a full member of the International Labour Organisation at Geneva. Under him the currency agreement between his country and our own and France was achieved. His Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, has gone much further than is commonly realised in lowering the tariff barriers round America through a series of bilateral treaties for the reduction of duties. Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Hull between them again went much further than is commonly realised ,here in preventing (without formal legal authority) the export of oil to Italy .till the Hoare-Laval episode sent a wave of indignation and disillusion over America.
it is certain that the President will set himself to extend the scope of international co-operation wherever opportunity offers. It will offer first at the forthcoming Pan-American Conference at Buenos Aires, which promises to result in a closer and more fruitful regional agreement than has yet existed between the republics of the American continent.
It will be a misfortune if through such steps as the creation of a Permanent , Court of Pan-American Justice regionalism becomes the enemy of universal- ism, but Mr. Roosevelt will- not lightly imperil the prestige of the Permanent Court at The Hague, on which American judges as distinguished as Mr. Hughes and Mr. Kellogg have held seats ; it is to be hoped that he will yet make America a full.member of the Court. Above all he will never underrate the importance of Anglo-American understanding and friendship. • In .every • new endeavour he may make to-- draw closer the ties between his country and •reahn he will -be assured of a warm and universal response -here. - - - -• '
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