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

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NEW YORK, Wednesday—Yesterday was a rather warm day in Dayton, Ohio, and I felt very guilty as the officers took me around Wright and Patterson Fields. It must have been such an old story to them, but to me it was very exciting and even the heat couldn't dampen the interest I felt in the work which is done at both fields.

Wright Field has changed so much since I saw it a number of years ago, before we were in the war, that it was hard to recognize it as the same place. At that time they showed me, with considerable pride, one new plane. This time they showed me so many new planes and so many experimental ones, that I could not even begin to tell you about them. In addition, I would find it hard to remember which were secret and which were not, so it is far better to tell you only that I came away with a feeling of growing military power which surely must make the high command in Germany and in Japan apprehensive.

General Meyers, at Wright Field, and General Duncan, at Patterson Field, certainly planned a most interesting tour for me. You might be interested to know that 46 percent of the civilian employees at Patterson Field are women and that they hope to reach 50 percent this year.

I lunched with the WACs, 300 strong, in their mess-hall and it was a very good lunch. Everybody told me how much they wanted to have more WACs and how deeply they regretted that they were not being recruited more rapidly. Certainly the women who are in the military services ought to be proud of the estimate that high-ranking officers have made as to their usefulness.

Germany's spy system has always been good, and they must know that their chance for victory is gone. They may feel that the morale of their people at home requires the use of the robot bomb, but it seems to me to be a wanton cruelty and an unnecessary building up of bitterness in a people who, on the whole, are inclined to be generous to their foes. Germany should remember that those who are slow to wrath, when finally stirred, are apt to be very implacable enemies. This robot bomb, which cannot be aimed at military objectives and which hits indiscriminately at civilians, strikes me as more of a boomerang than anything which Germany has done in a long time.

By four o'clock yesterday, I was at Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and went with Dr. and Mrs. Arthur Morgan to the assembly hall, where I gave a brief summary of my evening talk to students and faculty who could not be admitted in the evening. After supper at the tea house with the college president and his wife, Dr. and Mrs. Algo Henderson, we went over again to the assembly hall for the evening talk.

I reached New York City this morning and have a few errands to do before returning to Hyde Park.

E. R.

(COPYRIGHT 1944 BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, July 13, 1944

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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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.

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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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