President Roosevelt orated a vital Truth in Friday's harangue. "In the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy such power" ("the new instruments of public power" created by his administration) "would provide shackles for the liberties of the people." Also such power bodes danger when any sort of inexperienced, demagogic President and Administration hold it. That is why such added power seems scandalous when combined with wholesale corruption of the Civil Service. That is why those who do not hold as high opinion of Mr. Roosevelt as judging from the self-righteousness and continual self-quotation of his address, Mr. Roosevelt seems to himself, take the still present liberty of calling him . . . . the unprintable.
The disillusioning thing is that this man, believe it or not, the same who delivered Friday evening's guff, graduated from Harvard College, in good standing, about thirty-two years ago. Perhaps those who have repeatedly told us that educated men should go into politics were on the wrong track. Not that intelligent youth should shy from public service. Not that the problems of government are too narrow to challenge the gifted. But that, judging from our eminent example, and from Abraham Lincoln, perhaps brains and character are more important than, and not essential to, education, good family, and wealth.
Mr. Roosevelt came of a good family; he had wealth; he passed through the best and most expensive education in the country. After twentynine years, he found himself in a position where the richest and most powerful nation in the world was at his feet, begging for leadership, for strength, for intelligence. He yielded to the intrenched stupidity of special interests; to capital he gave monopoly, to labor he gave crooked unionism and class bitterness. Only borrowing on a back-breaking scale floated the country off the rocks of disaster.
Let us not perhaps propose the repeal of all Roosevelt's measures, although the A.A.A., the Guffey Act, the Wagner Labor Bill, the Social Security Act, and the Neutrality Law might go with great good effect. But let us, above all, repeal unreliability and treachery and flibbety-gibbety in government; let us, next fall, repeal the Roosevelt Presidency. In the midst of our great Three Hundredth Anniversary Celebration let the presence of this man serve as a useful antidote to the natural overemphasis of Harvard's successes.
