'Mr, Donald Richberg, the new head of the URA, was very outspoken on Tuesday, at Chicay his defence of President Roosevelt! recovery plans, The issue as he described it' was between the feoding of hungry millions and the balance ing of the budget. "Who dares," he asks, "Yo stand before the American people and declare that we should of have saved millions of persons from destitution, suffering and actual starvation last year in order restore the budget to balance," Expressed in those terms there appears to have been only one possible course to follow, the one, that the President took. It was an alterna tive which was obvious long before the President was swept into power, and that he has fecelved the full support of the American people ie indicated by the results of the recent primaries and the straw vote conducted by the "Literary Digest' Observers in the United States and abroad fully realized the decision which the new administration had to make, and there will be few who will deny that there was plenty of justifeation for what was done, Tt cannot yet be definitely stated wh ther the URA. programme ig a success or a failure, That time alone can tell, but there is not the slightest doubt that the actions of the United States Government. did much to stave off the more tragic results of depression, and to infuse into the hearts of the people a greater courage with which to face their dimeulties. In times of emergency such as that the question of cost has to be left for future consideration, and if it is shown that in the long run the whole scheme has been a fallure—and it is not yet certain that it will be—it will only be because of the enormous cost of bringing to the people the relief which the President set himself out so decisively to establish.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.