When the asbestos curtain rises and reveals the Seventy-third Congress in regular session, the chief theme of the play will be, according to the expectations of most of the spectators, a heroic struggle between the inflationists and the sound-moneyites. We hope the audience will be disappointed, because such a melodrama, however heated and exciting, would be far removed from reality—a romantic revival of the moustached-villain, lily-white heroine, save-the-child school. READ MORE >>
We have never before had anything like the Roosevelt administration. Except perhaps for early assemblies of the Founding Fathers, there has never been a government in this country which has acted so rapidly, and imprinted its influence on so many varied areas of our national life. It is not enough to say that Mr. Roosevelt has been faced with a great emergency. So was Mr. Hoover, and he was as immobile as a lump of mud. Nor, unless you are a hero worshiper, can you explain it by Mr. Roosevelt's superior personal virtue. READ MORE >>
There appears to be a very generally entertained notion among both liberals and conservatives, that if the Supreme Court of the United States upholds the recent recovery legislation it will be compelled to invent a complete new set of legal terminology, to tear up familiar constitutional landmarks and to graft new doctrine on an ancient document. It is popularly supposed to require a sort of dialectic earthquake, which will leave huge fissures in constitutional logic. It threatens even to create an unconstitutional habit of thought about constitutional issues. READ MORE >>
The Race's Splendor The race's splendor lifts her lip, exposes Amid her scarlet smile her little teeth; The years are sand the wind plays with; beneath The prisoned music of her deathless roses. Within frostbitten rock she's fixed and glassed; Now man may look upon her without fear. But her contemptuous eyes back through him stare And shear his fatuous sheep when he has passed. READ MORE >>
A recent article in The New Republic was entitled "Hoover's Tragedy." Some of us thought at the time that the tragedy was rather that of the people who had believed Mr. Hoover's campaign speeches of 1928; but he was probably one of those people, and there is no doubt that his personal career has a tragedy, objectively if not subjectively, in the Grand Athenian manner—almost a perfect exemplification of the doctrines of Aeschylus and Sophocles. READ MORE >>
A review of The Life of George Eliot by Emilie and Georges Romieu. READ MORE >>
Foreigners are fond of calling us the land of paradoxes. Our public finances certainly justify that characterization. The richest country in the world has been the most dilatory in balancing its budget and appears the most distracted and embarrassed in attaining that end. The fundamental explanation, of course, is the systematically inculcated hostility to the taxation of wealth. For ten years the press has sedulously repeated the Mellon 'doctrine that the immunity of the rich from taxation is a blessing for the poor. READ MORE >>
