LIVELY FIRST MEETING HELD BY POLITICS CLUB

America forced along the road to Caesarism by the NRA was the picture which emerged from the meeting of the Politics Club held last evening in the Common Room of Lowell House. Attended by many members of the faculty of the Departments of Government and Economics and the Law School, the heated discussion sketched out some of the likely developments in the American scene.

Declaring that there can be no return to normalcy William Y. Elliott, Professor of Government, declared that the Roosevelt Administration "cannot turn back from paternalism and must undertake further state supervision," and that the United States is heading for a condition which "will closely aproach state capitalism. The NRA envisions a state which must coerce its economic life." Edward S. Mason, Associate Professor of Economics, agreed that in order to carry out the economic program of the present administration "the government must set up an elaborate policing machine to enforce its policies."

Arguing from his intimate knowledge of the progression of events in Germany, Carl J. Friedrich, Associate Professor of Government, maintained that there was a possibility of predatory coercion by minority interest groups rather than state social coercion. This would be greatly intensified in America because of the lack of a well-developed bureaucracy and would be characterized by a partial disintegration of the centralized state power. Dr. G. C. S. Benson, Instructor in Government, posed the question of who would control the state if the state tried to control economic life. He suggested that America's failure in public utility regulation would lead to an attempt at public ownership rather than control.

"The whole thing is hopelessly unconstitutional," was the legal opinion as voiced by James A. McLaughlin, Professor of Law. It might be highly inadvisable, he argued, to scrap the Constitution completely and so suddenly, since the courts will uphold the NRA as only an emergency measure.

Winding up the meeting, A. N. Holcombe, Professor of Government, said that nothing drastic would happen, and that the chief result would be a shift of power to the middle class.