God's Country

When it was over the White House announcer declared that President Roosevelt had just broadcast his 36th radio address since taking office. But to most listeners his speech was his first heart-to-heart with the country at large since last October when, hopeful of price-upping, he started RFC on its fruitless gold-buying campaign (TIME. Oct. 30). What the President had to say last week from his oval study was in the nature of a review of the winter's work and a cheery farewell on the eve of his Pacific vacation. His smooth round voice was as vibrant as ever with self-confidence and good hope. He asked resounding rhetorical questions to which the answers, at least until the next election, seemed inevitably to be "yes." But if he talked more about the past than the future, if he seemed more on the defensive than heretofore, if he produced no startling ideas for projecting the New Deal into higher ground, few businessmen throughout the land were disappointed.

After the customary "My F-r-i-e-n-d-s," the President went on to say:

"This session of the 73rd Congress . . . provided for the readjustment of the debt burden. It lent a hand to industry. . . . It strengthened. ... It provided. . . . It made further advances. ... It supplemented. ... It took definite steps. . . . It created. . . . Finally, and I believe most important, it recognized, simplified and made more fair and just our monetary system. . . .

"I have continued to recognize three related steps. . . . The first was relief. ...

In a land of vast resources no one should be permitted to starve. Relief was and continues to be our first consideration. It calls for large expenditures and will continue in modified form to do so for a long time to come. We may as well recognize that fact. . . .

"The second step was recovery. ... I could cite statistics of our national progress. ... I also could cite statistics to show the great rise in the value of farm products. . . . But the simplest way for each of you to judge recovery lies in the plain facts of your own individual situation. Are you better off than you were last year? Are your debts less burdensome? Is your bank account more secure? Are your working conditions better? Is your faith in your own individual future more firmly grounded? . . . Plausible self-seekers and theoretical die-hards will tell you of the loss of individual liberty. Have you lost any of your rights or liberty or constitutional freedom of action and choice? ... I have no question in my mind as to what your answer will be. . . .

"Doubting Thomases may be divided roughly into two groups: First, those who seek special political privilege and, second, those who seek special financial privilege. . . . The toes of some people are being stepped on and are going to be stepped on. But these toes belong to the comparative few who seek to retain or to gain positions or riches or both by some short cut which is harmful to the greater good....

"In this process of evolution we seek security of the men, women and children of the nation. ... In other words, social insurance. ... A few timid people who fear progress . . . will call it 'Fascism,' sometimes 'Communism,' sometimes 'regimentation,' sometimes 'Socialism.' But in so doing they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical. . . .

"Let me give you a simple illustration: While I am away from Washington this summer a long needed renovation of and addition to our White House office building is to be started. The architects have planned a few new rooms built into the present all too small one-story structure. . . .* But the structural lines of the old executive office building will remain, the creation of master builders when our Republic was young. ... If I were to listen to the arguments of some prophets of calamity ... I should fear that while I am away for a few weeks the architects might build some strange new Gothic tower or a factory building or perhaps a replica of the Kremlin or of Potsdam Palace. But I have no such fears. . . . It is this combination of the old and the new that marks orderly peaceful progress --not only in building buildings but in building government itself. . . .

"While I was in France during the War our boys used to call the United States 'God's country.' Let us make it and keep it 'God's country.' "

*The renovations will cost $350,000, will double the White House office space.

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