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AND LEAVES A LONELY PLACE
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retrogression; we are perpetually moving forward to the New Freedom with some Wilson or back to normalcy with some Harding. This wavelike motion of history is too obvious to have escaped anyone's attention.
"Observation a little more careful, however, is required to disclose the fact that under this surface oscillation there is a second motion — also characterized by surges which suggest waves — but different from the first in that its upheavals are followed by relatively little ebbing. Much of Theodore Roosevelt's work was undone under Taft; much of Wilson's, under Harding; but the essential changes introduced under Jefferson have never been reversed, nor those introduced under Jackson or Lincoln. Each of these men was not merely an innovator in his own right, but each came to the presidency on the crest of a tremendous upsurge from the depths ... a genuine wave of the future.
"The surface oscillation commonly absorbs the attention of politicians . . . in the first place because it is more frequent than the other and in the second place because it is powerful enough to smash administrations . . . perhaps even political parties. But the second movement ... although less frequent and less obvious, is powerful enough to smash governments. It is frequently described as revolutionary, but it is a description that should be accepted with caution, for it does not develop explosive force until it encounters a rigid obstruction. The singular good fortune of the United States provided this nation— at the moment when each of the first three great upheavals swept into our history — with a leader ... a national leader able and energetic enough to blast the rigid obstructions out of the way and let the tide run free. The result is that the United States has survived at least three crises, every one of which contained enough potentially explosive force to wreck any country. Perhaps one of the essential differences between a politician and a statesman is the ability of the statesman to distinguish between the movement of surface billows and that of the tide."
It seems to me today that these words of Gerald Johnson sum up Roosevelt, the leader. Certainly there is none who can deny that fact that Franklin Roosevelt came to the presidecency on the crest of a tremendous upsurge from the depths. Certainly, there is none who can deny that the situation which prevailed in the black days of March in the year 1933 con