The Daily Alaska empire., 1933-08-21

II you talk With the men who are directing the movement for recovery you will be given all sorts of theories to explain what they are doing. You will not find, think, that they are wording ac- cording to comprehensive and definite point. You will not find that there exists clearly formu- lated policy embracing and co-or- dinating the many different mat ters with which the government is concerned. Much is said about the New Deal. But there is no dogmatic creed, enunciated from on high, which everyone believes in who has responsibility in Wash ington.
 Not only in the details of ad- miniStration, but in the decisions of policy as well, circumstance and personality, individual force and eccentricity, factionalism and favoritism, accident and improviS- ation, rather than logic and theory and formulae, are usually the de- ciding elements. To some tempera- ments a close view of the conduct of affairs will, therefore, be dis couraging. Looking for a sense of definite direction and clear pur- pose, they will find only arguments and practical expedience; they will see not a revolution and a recon struction but a very active and energetic example of muddling through. To other temperaments the character of this movement will be neither astonishing nor dis couraging. They will recall that the method of muddling through is the classic method of the Eng lish-speaking peoples, and that us- ing this method these peoples have succeeded, as no other peoples have, in riding out the storms of history and remaining free.
 Close doctrine and rigid pur- poses that apply to a whole na- tion have to be paid for their price is the suppression of individ- uality and the regimentation of opinion. A community of free men, who proceed by argument to leadership and consent, necessarily work out their policies as they go along. Events rather than the orieS, experience rather than doc urine, supply the reasons by which men are brought into line. They do not advance in a straight line, but forward and backward and sidewiSe, and most of the time they look as if they did not know what they were doing or where they were going. Sometimes they do not know. But our political traditions teach us that it is better to move irregularly but with the minds of the people participating and con- vinced, than to impose grandiose logical patterns of conduct upon them, and compel them to obey.
 AS we look over the Spectacu- lar history of the past six months, nothing, it seems to me, is so inn pressive or so deeply reassuring as the evidence we have had that there are indeed great reserves of political wisdom in a nation hab- ituated by self-government. The knowledge to do this or that par ticular thing may be lacking. We cannot be certain, for example, that we have chosen the best of all possible monetary policies. We do not know as yet how to ad- just our internal measures to the outer world We cannot see very far ahead as to how the agricul- tural control will work or what will be the consequences of the N. R. A.
 But what we do know is that in the spring we overcame the paralysis of government in Wash ington, and were able to achieve unity of action. We do know that we were able to sweep aside the Instructions of organized minori- ties and the influences of private | In hn