The Durant news. (Durant, Miss.) 1882-1985, 1944-06-22
AFTER II YEARS

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Mr.. Roosevelt has been President for more than IL
years now, and is showing every symptom OF wanting to
be signed on for a fourth four-year term. A lot Of people
are thinking about how far the nation has gotten and where
It is after Ii years of Roosevelt. Where would we be after
Is years of Roosevelt?
Whoever or whatever is to lame-you have to make
up your own mind about that-the correct verdict appears
to be that the United States is now in it's most perilous and
critical PERIOD mil1itarily ,s and economically since the Civil
Mh.,. Arc Under the present Administration, too,
NJ" A., the United States is being frequently nudg-
we wow! ed and now and then grabbed by the hair
and jerked toward dictatorship, totaitarianism, the things
our men are fighting against overseas.
The most recent incident in the Roosevelt campaign to
make us all slaves of the Government was the Administra-
TONS fight in Congress to put off the Pearl Harbor court
martial trials till after the November z election. A bin ex-
tending the deadline to next December !, well past Election
Day, is now before the President for signature.
The logical inference is that open, public trials of Ad-
miral Kimmel and Gen. Short would disclose facts which
the Administration is afraid to have the American people
know before the election. A determined Congressional probe
seen whether there is enough independence in Congress to
bring that about.
Another seizure of autocratc power occurred in the
Of Esquire magazines second-class mailing privileges.
Mr.. Walker at first said Esquires Varga girls were
icemen that he changed his reason to a plea that ESQUIRE
was not serving the public interest. That is not legally a
matter for the Postmaster General to pass on; but this
Administration insists on arrogating that power to itself.
This Administration, indeed, appears to have carefully
studied the careers Of all modern dictators, and to have
found that these birds always chain down the press first.
That is because dictatorship most likely. cannot survive
when opposed by q free press.
The Gre0f Brnin Accordingly, Mr.. Roosevelt has
Grabs for Power the Il s nress. " : wv"
The Esquire affair is one of these. The anti trust suit
against the Associated Press was another. The A. p. is a
cooperative agency which gathers news in competition with
other news services, and is therefore not a trust. Yet the
Roosevelt Administration, repeatedly needed by Marshall
Field iii after the A. P. membership refused a franchise to
his violently pro-Roosevelt Chicago paper, whistled up At
tOrney General Biddle and had him prosecute the A. P.
Another Roosevelt technc for intimidating the press
consists in continually deriding and denouncing it.
Nj. Rooseveits Federal Communications Chairman,
James L. Fly, persistently harnesses the radio industry. Dis
claiming intent to censor radio. he nevertheless has inter-
fered from time to time with radio programs contents and
subject matter. And the FEC has the licensing power which
it uses as an Administration club over radio.
In its ambition to make us all it's servants, this Ad-
ministration recently had Sewell Avery, head of Mont
gonery Ward & Co., thrown off the Ward premises in
Chicago. The plea was wartime necessity: and Attorney
General Biddle stated that in wartime the President can
declare any emergency he wants to and the courts should
not presume to put their judgment in his path.
In Washington, the Government is currently trying 80
assorted village nuts, professional cranks, chronic sore
heads, etc, on charges of having conspired to set up a Nazi