The men who fought at Lexington and Concord 159 years ago were prepared to protest, and most effectively, against the policies of the government then in power. But they were prepared to do more than that--they were prepared to set forth policies of their own, fit, as they believed, to meet the exigencies of the times. Is this true of the delegation of Lexington citizens who left for Washington on the eve of the anniversary of the battle of Lexington to protest against the recovery program of the Roosevelt administration?

One scans in vain the published reports of their declaration to discover their program. There is a preamble asserting the right of a free people to protest when their rights are being trespassed upon, and there is a series of five protests. The Lexington citizens are against federal interference in business, the indefinite extension of emergency legislation, ill-considered legislation, the increase of bureaus, boards and commissions and their exercise of arbitrary powers, and the extravagant and wasteful expenditure of public funds "on unneeded and unproductive projects, thereby creating a constantly mounting public debt."

All this seems to mean that the embattled Lexington citizens are against the Roosevelt recovery program, lock, stock and barrel. But they offer no hint of a constructive program to substitute for it and we are left to infer that they think none is necessary. They would sweep away every vestige of what has been set up, and have the country drop back precisely to where it was before the depression. That, they seem to think, would automatically restore the nation to prosperity. The millions of people who are still out of work will hardly agree with them. In fact, it is to be feared that they represent a very small minority, unlike their forefathers whose muskets spoke for a very substantial majority of their fellow citizens.