The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

[This column has emendations. View original version]

      

WASHINGTON, Friday—Spanish children are weighing more and more heavily on my mind. The American Friends Service Committee has been active in feeding children there, largely through the English Quakers, and in the last few days I have heard so many stories that I have been carried back to the days of the World War. I hope very much that those of us who can in this country, will contribute money so that these children may be taken to safety, fed and clothed and educated adequately. I also hope that they can be kept as near home as possible so that the distracted parents may find them again as soon as conditions warrant the reuniting of families.

I think older people suffer almost more than children under circumstances such as exist under war conditions where children have to be separated from their natural guardians. Of course, many of these children will probably have no parents to search for them in the future. Even in that case, I think it is best that they should grow up as near their own homes as possible and be returned to the part of the country from which they came when possible.

It does not matter a great deal in the case of children whether their elders are right or wrong. The children are not responsible, and just as we fed children of every nationality during the World War, I hope we will help to feed, and clothe and educate any children that need it at the present time.

Mr. and Mrs. Walter Brown and their two little boys and I were having a leisurely breakfast this morning when they came to tell me that Mrs. John Greenway had arrived. I expected her this evening and it was therefore a delightful surprise. We never meet without having so much to talk about that time flies and before I knew it, my horse was waiting for me at the Memorial Bridge and I was still sitting at my desk, not even having seen the housekeeper. To say that I hurried through my interviews would hardly describe the way I hustled people in and out of the chair beside my desk. Then I spent an hour and a half riding along the Potomac River.

Mrs. William Brown Meloney, Mrs. Frances Parkinson Keyes, and Mrs. Anna Louise Strong lunched with me. Three very interesting women and all so very different! An afternoon full of appointments and tonight we give the party for the newspaper fraternity. It is warm enough to make the garden a very pleasant place but I am as usual wondering if we are going to have heavy storms which will keep us from enjoying wandering about in the open air.

Every afternoon of late we have had a thunderstorm and I am thankful that my early training on the Hudson River made me impervious to any excitement no matter how hard "Hendrik Hudson may roll his ninepins." When I had my daughter's dogs with me, the male dog, Jack, always provided the show of nerves. He hid himself under the bed or the table or if possible under my chair evidently feeling that if you saw nothing you were protected.

E.R.


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Geographic
  • Washington (D.C., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 29, 1937

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
    [ ISNI ]
  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ISNI ]
  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]

Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

XML master last modified on June 9, 2017.

HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.

Transcription created from a photocopy of a draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated May 28, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 28 May 1937, AERP, FDRL