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This American radical will be generally against Statism; he will favor greater decentralization of governmental authority, though he will "be ready to invoke even the Federal Government in the interests of maintaining real freedom among the masses of the population." But he will want to strengthen local government in order to prevent his old enemy, the Federal power, from increasing every decade. To this end he would even work for a reduction in the number of States so that "new areas, fewer in number and more nearly equal in population" might constitute stronger units of local government.
Demobilization of our armed forces, which is a thought full of alarm to many thinkers, will offer to the American radical, says Dr. Conant, a God-given opportunity to "reintroduce the American concept of a fluid society." Handled properly, a healthy body politic will be assured for at least a generation; handled improperly, "we may well sow the seeds of a civil war within a decade."
He believes that to handle it properly involves this: setting up Federally financed but State-operated machinery for retraining the veterans and placing them in jobs, plus possibly agencies to lend money to groups of competent veterans who might start small retail or manufacturing businesses. Should the veterans feel they were replaced "in civilian life on the basis of the accidents of geography or birth, there will be many who will become frustrated and embittered—particularly if the general level of prosperity should fall," and we should have departed further from the American ideal and abetted a caste society which "is one of potential danger of eruption, danger for the liberty of all."
Demobilization will be the hour of our greatest crisis, the hour for the greatest service of the American radical, whose voice, Dr. Conant admits with regret, he does not yet hear.