PROFESSOR SPRAGUE

Today O.M.W. Sprague returns to the Business School, where our youth is taught how to make more money from the family aspirin factory. The government's loss is hardly equalled by the business school's gain, for what many men could do along the Charles, very few are fitted to do in the early days of a new national administration.

In its inability to make use of the experience and thought of an intelligent opposition the government of Mr. Roosevelt does not stand alone. That failure accounts for many of the major blunders of American history, from the suppression of Nicholas Biddle's National Bank to the panic strategy of Herbert Hoover. Where there is no coherent opposition there can be no sincere, continuous criticism of principle; democracy has been characterized by the lack of coherent opposition, for the reason that no man can or should have the humility and patience to convince a bureau, or a department, strong in the sanction of a majority.

It was not thus in the days of Frederick the Great, of Catherine of Russia. Democracy, in bringing us other things, has clearly cost us this. Professor Sprague did all that was possible in laying his case before the administration. And he did all that was possible in laying it before the people, but it has already been forgotten in the welter of Father Coughlin and the liquor laws. Mr. Warren now has the monetary inner track, and Mr. Ezekiel spins agricultural codes with Oriental quickness and fecundity, but it can scarcely be argued that their position is not more precarious than that of, say, a minor department head in the Bureau of Fisheries.