SHOWED CHARACTER

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 641, 20 September 1933, Page 6

SHOWED CHARACTER

ROOSEVELT'S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDEN CE TO WORLD. NEWSPAPER APPROVAL, "It was an American Declaration •of Independence that was handed to the London Conference delegates," says the Literary Digest, which quotes the following views which cannot fail to prove to British readers that the American Press approved of President Roosevelt's bombshell at the opening of the Econcmic Conference." The Literary Digest adds: — "Through the eountry the Presidential utterance which was carried in the papers of July 4 aroused an enthusiasm which drowned out the few eritieal notes. Just as a sample of this, there was the RepubT'can Bostonj Transcript paying tribute to the 'admirable, almost astounding force of character' shown in the note. The' Philadephia Record found it 'a mes- , sage of high hope to the American people.' The News in Detroit, the Ohio State Journal in C'olumbus, the Post in Denver, were among important newspapers which hailed the President's statement as 'a new Declaration of Independence.' "It seemed to the Charlotte Observer that the President's countrymen 'will glory in his refusal to bow and scrape to the artful devices of the European statesmen.' In the opinion of the Portland Oregonian, 'the sharpless of the President's language is justified by the policy of France and by its threat to wreck the conference on the reef of the gold standard.' "A sort of editorial chuckle at the way the President has been 'playing with the Economic Conference as a cat plays with a mouse' comes from the Troy Record. Several papers note inconsisteneies between the President's earliest and latest statements on the conference. In the words of the Springfield Republican. " 'The explanation probably must be sought! in the fact that Mr. Roosevelt is not an expert in economics and monetary science, but a politician and a state sman. Of political forces and crises he knows far more than all of his advisers on stabilisation and, so far as his grand objective is concerned, the steering is necessarily in his hands. Opportunism he neeessarily embraces; h'e is plainly pursuing the main chance. On May 16, in a stirring address to the nations of the world, he could urge common effort on behalf of "stabilisation of currencies,' among other things. On July 3 he could condemn "the specious fallacy of achieving a temporary and probably an artificial stability in foreign exchange.' A quick shift, one may say, yet much had happened between May 16 and June 3'."