The full implications of the triumphant re-election of President Roosevelt were enthusiastically described by Mr. Christopher Hollis in an address to the Newmah Society at Oxford on Sunday. They were so great as to lead Mr. Hollis to declare that a Te Deum in thanksgiving ought to have been sung in every Cdtholic church in the world.
In the years following the war unprecedented prosperity had in the United States lett the government unchallenged in the hands of the Republican Party, said Mr. Hollis. This meant in practice that it had been controlled by Wall Street and the !Dosses of industry of the east coast.
It was the policy of the Republican party to nominate for the presidfncy the weakest man they could be certain of getting in. The country 144 been wholly devoted to the unlimited production of material goods. CUlvinist economics were accepted without question, liberty and property forsworn.
Under Hoover the inevitable slump had come with appalling severity, and the elections of 1p32 provided the Democrats with their chance. Roosevelt seized that chance, and had effected, although without recourse to violenoe, a revolution as gigantic as those in Russia, Germany. or Italy.
Attempted Perpetual Cure He hadTefused to accept as inevitable the recurrence of alternate periods of prosperity and depression, he had refused to take the easy way to immediate but temporary recovery, but had gone to the roots of the economic system, there to effect a radical cure. He had, moreover, said Mr. Hollis, accepted the warning of Mr. Belloc that either the institution of property or the institution of slavery must be restored, and had pursued a social policy in full accord with Cat olic principles, and even, it was claimed, approximating to the Distributist ide Is of Mr. Chesterton.
R formation Reversed He was, in fact, " one of the very few men in Me history of mankind who has really changed the course of history," and might even be said to have " reversed the whole verdict of the Reformation."
Opposed by powers previously regarded as supreme, by Wall Street, by a practically unanimoua Press, and by not only the Republican politicians but by men of his own party, such as John W. Davies, who had been a presidential candidate before him; and with no interference,with.the,nor-mat liberties of the subject, .without the firing of a single shot or the'Stippre.ssal of a single .newspaper, he had completely re-orientated American civilisation; and the result of the elections of November 3 had been the complete endorsement of his work by the American people.