A STRIKING CONTRAST

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 517, 28 April 1933, Page 4

A STRIKING CONTRAST

The first Democratic President since Woodrow Wilson and holding in time of peace the same constitutional dictatorship that was vested in Wilson during the War, Mr. Franklin Roosevelt seems to present in other respects just asl striking a contrast to Wilson as to the last two of his ' Republican successors. They were all men of charaeter and courage, but they were all silent and inaccessible men, all bad "mixers," all lacking in the human touch which eases the difficulties of government by the lubricants of friendliness and sympathy That President Roosevelt was endowed with the courage and the confidence which were his country's most urgent needs was apparent both from the brave words of his inaugural address and from the brave deeds with which he has been daily following them up. But our cabled reports have necessarily failed to indicate the essential contribution made to the Prej sident's strength by his less , austere qualities which figure al- | most as conspicuously as the others. There was a coldness j about the virtue of Woodrow Wilson and Mr. Hoover which deprived it of the success that it deserved. Mr. Boosevelt is able to impart a human warmth to his gospel which immensely strengthens its popular appeal. This aspect of the President's strength is the subject of some striking testimony in the opinions which the Literary Digest ! of March 18 collects under the j title "The Nation Ralljdng Bej hind the President." "Perhaps 1 a leader has come," is a remark ; made in Washington which is de- ; scribed as expressing "a feeling j that seems to have swept over ■ the entire country since March 4." and one of the reasons assigned for the strength of this feeling is that "in Washington the President's personality has created a new atmosphere and has established sympathetic relations with the representatives of his Press." In the intimacy of his relations with the Press, it is possible to fear that Mr. Roosevelt may be going too far. At the first official meeting — under normal conditions one might have said "encounter" — with the Washington newspaper men, not only did he abolish the usual fiction of a "White House spokesman" and appear in person and without disguise, but he also dispensed with the established requirement that all questions should be submitted in writing. Except for a brief spell in Harding's time, no President since Theodore Roosevelt had permitted such freedom, but, as the "Springfield Republican in a recent article, says, conditions from 1901 to 1909 were very different from those of jto-day. In those days the only foreign pape.rs regularly represented in Washington by their own nationals were The Times and the Morning Post, and Theodore Roosevelt's preference for individual interviews with favoured correspondents was no precedent for "the general Press Conference of 100 or mpre" to which his namesake proposes to submit himself for cross-examination twice a week ! One of the reasons for the requirement of written notice is that the spokesman is otherwise liable to be trapped by hostile examiners, but during his four years as Governor of New York State those traps appear to have had no terror for Mr. Roosevelt. For the present, however, hostility is in abeyance at Washington, and his first meeting with the Press as President was evidently an unqualified sucess. What the President is under-tak-ing is ( as the Springfield Republican says) "to bank on his own mental, a'lertness," and to that there seems to be no limit. It is not merely mental alert-