HALF-BAKED TORIES

"There will be no inflation for six years."

Thus spake Roosevelt's right-hand man, Donald Richberg, a few days ago. Yet neither doubting Thomases, Tories, old guardists, nor even the few quite respectable anti-now dealers have drawn sufficient nectar from this dictum to plunge into the requested attitude of confidence Why not?

Primarily, it is because this group has several other definitions for inflation than printing press inflation. Reducing the gold content of the dollar, unbalanced budgets and relief program projects necessitating millions of dollars worth of government bonds might be called inflationary by these lunatics. They might even see in President Roosevelt's new plaything, five billion dollars, means of making a currency uneasy.

We Tories see little in Mr. Richerg's speech which will make us expand our moneyed interests in Wall Street. We old guardists see little assurance that our industries will be left free from competing relief projects to expand. We are very, very timid and need our president's voice to reassure us.

How do any of our group know that Mr. Richberg is not to follow Raymond Moley, Lewis Douglas, General Johnson, and Rexford Tugwell into that attractive, but non-political, circle of his-beens? He does seem quite impressed with being assistant-president, so impressed even that he may soon find himself in a satin-lined ash can. Other trial balloons have soared gracefully over the capital before but treacherous currents usually carry them to Utopia, and strange as it may seem, their maker at the time. So we have given up gazing at these colored balls and their tinsel instigators, and wait for the word of our President who is well-intentioned even if circumstances make him sometimes an inaccurate sage.