Since taxation could not cover it, he had to borrow. In finance his plan was to move towards a managed currency, and his aim a dollar which would not change in its purchasing or debt-paying power during the succeeding generation. There was to be constant talk of a balanced Budget in some year not too far ahead, but the figures and estimates were scarcely to point in that direction. With the huge defence programme which developed later all hope of it expired.
Fireside Chats
There were three aspects of the President’s ‘New Deal’. The first was to avert abuses by imposing drastic limitations on all big industrial organizations; the second to develop national resources by such means as huge dams and hydro-electric plants; the third to establish social security in one grand sweep. Nothing in regard to it was particularly new except the immensity of its scale and speed with which it was attempted to put it through. At every stage, moreover, he sought to carry the country with him, and to this end kept it informed of both his aims and achievements by his ‘Fireside Chats’, a system of direct personal contact which developed into an unprecedented intimacy between President and people.
There were, of course, loud complaints from business and other interests, and those who felt themselves to be prejudiced or endangered by the new legislation. But apart from some checks and some dissension the President’s proposals were carried through on a broad tide of popular support. Even after what has been called the first ‘honeymoon’ year everything continued to go smoothly enough. Then, however, the ‘codes’ which Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 had imposed upon employers were condemned by the Supreme Court and rendered invalid. His Agricultural Adjustment Act was also to suffer the same fate. It was the beginning of a sharp constitutional conflict. In spite, however, of a tendency in some quarters to make it a political issue, the President, to whom opposition was always a stimulant, faced the difficulty calmly, and, in trying to save what he could, succeeded beyond expectation. In spite, therefore, of the loss of legislation which incidentally had served a great deal of its purpose, the ‘New Deal’ went on.
The new President had also been faced with serious problems of foreign policy. War debts provided one of them and disarmament another. In April, 1933, Mr Ramsay MacDonald went to see him at Washington to discuss the whole world situation, and in May he issued an important message to the heads of the 54 States concerned in the disarmament and economic conferences of that year. In it he appealed for a common understanding and suggested a definite non-aggression pact. It appeared indeed at the time that he contemplated a closer participation of representatives of the United States in international conferences, and as a step in that direction made Mr Norman Davis his Ambassador at large to various countries of Europe. Unfortunately, however, owing to American failure to see eye to eye with some of the European countries in regard to the stability of international exchange, the high hopes which had been formed were to remain unrealized, for the economic conference proved abortive. Thereafter for some years the United States was to lapse into an increasing detachment.
Plea for Broader Outlook
By 1935 the President was able to claim that his basic programme was substantially complete. Apart from its material effects it had undoubtedly exerted a remarkable educative influence on the people, and in the same year he stated that the objective of the nation had greatly changed, and that clearer thinking and understanding were leading to a broader and therefore a less selfish outlook. By that year also the economic skies had begun to lighten. It was, therefore, with the confidence of great achievements and substantial hopes that he entered his campaign of 1936. The Republicans had chosen Mr Alfred Landon, the Governor of Kansas, to oppose him – by no means a formidable champion. It was, none the less, a bitter combat, in which, except for his party organization, the President seemed to stand alone. Against him were arrayed all the massed strength and resources of financial and industrial leadership, some of the clergy, more than three-quarters of the nation’s newspapers, and the film industry. Relying, however, upon the record of his administration he toured the country. The result was remarkable indeed. All that his opponents could do and say counted, as The Times said, for no more than Mrs Partington’s mop. It was observed at the time that everybody was against him except the electorate; but it returned him with a majority of 8,593,130 popular votes and with only Maine and Vermont against him in the Electoral College. It was a victory beyond all precedent and a supreme vindication of American democracy.
Second Term
A Remarkable Prophecy
Entering upon his second term in January, Roosevelt put forward proposals for a radical reorganization of the Executive Branch directed towards increasing the effectiveness of the office of President. He also turned to the Supreme Court, which had proved so great an obstacle to his plans, and proposed to elect an additional judge above the nine who were then sitting for every one of them who had passed the age of 72. He was at once accused of tampering with the constitution, and the storm which followed was by no means confined to the Opposition. He had, therefore, to forgo his scheme. Fate was, however, to come to his assistance, for several judges were soon to die, and in a few more years the Bench was to be composed of men with greater sympathy for his social legislation.
The second term, however, was to be full of other than domestic preoccupations. In his Inaugural Address he did not mention foreign affairs; but in the next October he sounded a warning note and said that the epidemic of world lawlessness was spreading. ‘Let no one imagine,’ he added, ‘that America will escape, that America may expect mercy; that this Western Hemisphere will not be attacked; and that it will continue tranquilly and peacefully to carry on the ethics and the arts of civilisation.’ It was remarkable prophecy; but perhaps even more remarkable, the prophet himself proceeded to act upon it.
Dictators Denounced
With, therefore, all the prestige of his election behind him, he proceeded to take what steps he could to reinforce the cause of peace. One of them was to continue patiently to foster his ‘good neighbour’ policy in regard to the South American countries. When in 1941 Japan struck her blow he was to reap the advantage of the wise course Washington in his days had pursued towards the Latin American nations and of the established machinery of Pan-American cooperation. Nine Caribbean republics joined in at once in North America’s war of defence, and what had formerly been an almost hostile attitude on the part of South America towards its northern neighbour was as time passed to be one of increasing friendliness. As a result, America as a whole was to become the most disappointing of all continents to the Axis, and what might have been a fruitful field for the tares of Nazi diplomacy was very largely denied to it. Neither, however, the ‘good neighbour’ policy nor his desire to prevent war was to keep him from forceful comment on the increasingly aggressive and tyrannical acts of the German and Italian dictators, and he denounced Germany’s disregard of treaties soundly. When, moreover, he went to Canada in 1938 to open the new international bridge over the St Lawrence he made the historic pledge: ‘I give you the assurance that the people of the United States will not stand idly by if Canadian soil is threatened by any other Empire.’
In 1938 also Roosevelt began more fully to employ his influence in the affairs of Europe. Consequently when the crisis in regard to Czechoslovakia was at its height he addressed messages to both sides begging them to reach a peaceful solution by negotiation: and not to break off their deliberations. He sent, too, a second appeal to Hitler urging the maintenance of peace and then, when all negotiations seemed to have broken down at Godesberg, he established touch with Mussolini and had a hand in bringing about the Munich Conference, thus delaying war for a season. Throughout, however, the several critical years before it came he had no illusions in regard to the sinister nature of the dictators’ policies. ‘It is no accident,’ he had said, when he visited Buenos Aires for the Pan-American Conference, ‘that the nations which have carried the process of erecting trade barriers the farthest are those which proclaim most loudly that they require war as an instrument of policy.’ Incidentally, he concluded on that occasion with the remarkable words, ‘We took from our ancestors a great dream. We offer it back as a great unified reality. We offer hope for peace and more abundant life to the peoples of the world.’
Opposition to Hitler
Roosevelt saw far too deeply into the European situation to be set at rest by