You may hear any day angry discussions of the course of events in Washington. You will hear ardent New Dealers assert that the government is building… - John T. Flynn

It would of course be a grave injustice to Mr. Roosevelt to say that he is a militarist in the sense that Mussolini is a militarist. Mussolini is a lover of war. Mr. Roosevelt is not. But he is a lover of the instruments of war. There was a time when he favored universal military training-the corrosive curse of Europe.

In 1933, suddenly, with little or no consideration in the great disorder and fever of the collapse, Congress passed the National Recovery Act. That act authorized the President to bring about a complete and comprehensive organization of industry and to make rules and regulations governing every phase of its activities. Under practically every category of industry and finance the entire nation was organized into what the Italians would call ‘corporatives’; what we called code authorities. These code authorities, under the authority of the President, were empowered to make rules, to regulate production, prices, distribution, competition in all its phases. These regulations had the force of law and under them men could be hauled into court on civil and criminal liabilities. Some men were actually jailed for violating them. It is, I think, a fair statement that the President, under the NRA, exercised the right to make laws over at least half, if not more, of the domain within which Congress ordinarily legislates. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, declared this law unconstitutional and based its opinion entirely on the proposition that Congress had delegated its legislative power to the President, who in turn had delegated it to the code authorities.

Norman Thomas, in particular, has won a unique place for himself in the good opinion of the American people because of his courage, his complete honesty and his great power on the platform as a champion not merely of the Socialist philosophy but of many fine human causes. At one time it had built a considerable propaganda ma-chine. It had the People's House in New York with its large Socialist library and the Rand School which was the center of its educational activity. But it was an honest movement run by honest men who offered socialism to the people and called it by its true name. But Americans made it plain they did not want that. In England the old Fabians, as we have seen, never offered socialism as such. They peddled one product at a time, always omitting the Socialist label.