University of Virginia Library

Industrialist Belittles Nixon

By CYRUS EATON

—Ed.)

CLEVELAND—To one who has
survived all the financial panics of
this century, has known all the
Presidents and has been privileged
to participate in building up
American industry and agriculture,
the disgrace of the dollar in world
financial centers is sobering.

Who has the main responsibility
for this economic debacle?

In effect we have a Presidential
dictatorship sustained by the
greatest propaganda machine in
history: nationwide prime-time
television. The President ignores
Congress, rarely consults his
Cabinet, bypasses the United
Nations and announces his
decisions over the air to the
unsophisticated. In contrast to
democracies such as Britain and
Canada where members of cabinets
must be either Members of
Parliament or the Upper House, and
where Premiers and their advisers
are always available for public
questioning by their fellow elected
representatives, American
enterprises are carried on by our
President in secrecy except for
several cronies in the pertinent
departments.

The President has determined
our disastrous financial policies and
international relations. As
Commander in Chief of the armed
forces, a position of power
strangely out of place in a
democracy, especially in this
nuclear age when one man's
fanaticism could end the human
race, he carries on illegal foreign
wars with the aid of thousands of
spies in all nations.

Three Wall Street lawyers,
Nixon, Mitchell and Rogers, are
spending the taxpayers' money
around the world like drunken
sailors. Now without warning,
advice or consent, let alone
consultation, they have overnight
adopted sensational policies
offensive to all other nations. These
lawyers have no inventories to
liquidate, they have lucrative Wall
Street practices waiting where their
services will be especially in
demand in view of the recent
additions to the Supreme Court.
But many American corporations
will have to struggle against the
crushing burden of taxation, the
high cost of money, and formidable
competition from foreign
corporations that have been
subsidized by American funds.

The most obvious move to help
the dollar is to cut out the expense
of maintaining American troops,
wives and children in the style to
which they have become
accustomed all over the world.

Future historians may use such
epithets as dictator and demagogue
to describe the President.
Philosophers may assess his
intellectual depth in terms of his
association with Billy Graham, for
while scientists and astronomers
seek an answer to the riddle of the
universe, Mr. Nixon apparently
accepts—or wishes to give that
impression—Dr. Graham's naive
theory on the origin and destiny of
man. It, too, lends itself to
distribution by television.

No other man I have met has
such an accurate and complete
understanding of Richard Nixon as
Premier Pham Van Dong of North
Vietnam. He said to me, "There
will be no end to the war in
Vietnam while Mr. Nixon is
President. He will use many
pretexts for renewed military
attacks on us. The war will end
only when Congress refuses to
provide the money for further
participation."

The time has come for the
Congress to accept its responsibility
and to act vigorously through the
appropriate committees, bearing in
mind in this time of our financial
humiliation the injunction of the
ancient prophet to "do justly, love
mercy and walk humbly."