The Times News

NEWSPAPERS' OPINION
THERE IS NOT MUCH TIME

Here in the South, in South Carolina, most of the people are unaware of the political movements going on in the United States. They are receiving benefits from the AAA, the land owners and other property owners are normally prosperous, and the money of the government paid to the thousands of officeholders and sent into the state for relief enlivens trade.

The political currents in Washington and other centers profoundly stirring and seeking revolution in our form of government are unknown to the average man. He is scarcely more aware of them than he is of the Ethiopian question. They do not interest him. His congressmen do not tell him of them.

The effort of the Roosevelt Administration or New Deal, is to convert the republic into a "collectivist" or socialistic state. That is what they mean by "economic planning."

With the justices of the supreme court apparently determined to live by their oaths and support the constitution, day by day it becomes evident to the New Deal that it cannot be saved without radical amendment if not virtual destruction of the constitution.

Hence arrangements are being quietly made to pitch the New Deal, or Roosevelt, campaign of 1936 on constitutional amendment, and that seemingly is the logical and inevitable course for the New Dealers to pursue.

If these worthy gentlemen shall succeed in realizing their plans the South Carolinians will in two or three years no longer dwell in the United States. There will be no United States. They will live in the United State.

Signs are present in South Carolina and in the South that the people may allow these changes to come to pass without advocating or resisting them. It is possible that they will discover the channel of their destinies utterly changed before they know or suspect what is going on.

Their New Deal congressmen tell them nothing of it. When occasionally they deliver speeches they confine themselves to discussion of surface symptoms. They draw a picture of conditions three years ago and ask, "aren't you better off?" They tell you about the money that has come from Washington, of the stadiums erected, and there they stop. They do not discuss the underlying philosophy of the New Deal. Some of them are not competent to discuss it, and others are afraid.

The changes contemplated in the form of government are far greater than those involved in the Confederate war and its results, whether or not you think so. They may be desirable. The News and Courier pretends to no final and perfect knowledge. All its notions and beliefs about government may be foolish and false, as the New Dealers say they are.

What we are saying to the South Carolinians is that if they do not wish the country that they and their fathers have lived in to depart from them and to find themselves in a new country like to some of those that have come into being in Europe and from which government by the people, or democracy, has been expelled, they had better wake up.

There is not much time.—Charleston News and Courier.