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

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NEW YORK, Tuesday—I am going up to a meeting of very young people at a school at Edgecombe Avenue and 164th Street, this afternoon. The Youthbuilders, and one or two other organizations working with the school-age children, are trying to get the youngsters to come together during the summer months and devise ways in which they can be constructively busy. They are anxious to find things to do which will make the white and colored children of the neighborhood feel they are working together in something of use to the war effort.

After this meeting, I have three people coming to the apartment at intervals of half an hour.

Mr. Upton Sinclair has just sent me an article he has written called, "Freestate—A Plan For European Reconstruction." I don't know in which publication this will appear, but I think some of the things he says about the problems which will confront us in Europe when our armies are victorious, are well worth considering now.

The following is an excellent summary of what will confront the United Nations. "The Nazis have deliberately scrambled the whole of Central Europe. They have done it with German thoroughness for the precise purpose of making it impossible for anybody to unscramble it.

I do not mean merely that populations have been shifted about; that millions of families have been driven from their homes, and their homes and land turned over to Germans and to Quislings. I mean that the industry of Europe has been taken to pieces and put together again on a new principle. Competition among the industries of different nations has been wiped out and the whole thing has been reconstructed into one colossal industrial trust, managed by the Nazis for one purpose and one only, the waging of Nazi war and the gaining and preserving of Nazi victories."

This is a very accurate picture. While much will undoubtedly be destroyed before victory is achieved, Mr. Sinclair's suggestions as to how to meet the problem are really interesting. I think the people of this country will be interested in this article, but even if they do not read it, the statement of the problem is well worth their consideration.

How would you preserve that which is good in the future chaos and bring the best economic situation as quickly as possible to the greatest number of people? These populations will be able to carry their own weight and be of use to us and the rest of the world as co-workers only as they get settled and return to economic security.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1943, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, August 11, 1943

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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