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

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PARIS, Thursday ,—The newspapers here have been having a field day calling me up to find out what I had to say about General Eisenhower's statement regarding his possible candidacy for the Presidency.

What the general seems to say is that Senator Lodge is correct in saying that he, General Eisenhower, is a Republican. He goes on to say that those who are entering his name in primaries have a right to do so. He adds that he has a job to do here for the country, that he is not going to campaign against anyone in the primaries. In other words, if he is drafted and the people seem to call him to a more important job than the one he is doing now, he will answer the call. Otherwise, he will go on with the very important job he is doing now for his country.

The papers calling me said that meant the general would run.

I am not so sure of this, as it seems to depend on what the attitude of the other Republican candidates may be. Mr. Taft and Mr. Stassen will have to withdraw in his favor.

To a great many people who are not very anxious to see Mr. Taft elected because they fear his attitude on foreign policy, General Eisenhower's possible candidacy would seem an answer to their prayer. To others, it will simply mean the beginning of an effort to find out what General Eisenhower, as candidate for the Presidency of the U.S., thinks about a great many questions on which he has so far been silent.

He, of course, realizes that being a military hero and being a candidate for the Presidency are two totally different things. Both of them are dangerous, but in quite different ways.

I have an idea that the general has persuaded himself that a call to duty is a call which must be answered.

All of those who admire him and wish him well and recognize the remarkable piece of work he has done both for his country and those over here will hope that his decision is a wise one.

It was a great pleasure to find Mrs. Laura Margolis-Jarblum, director for the Joint Distribution Committee for France, accompanying me when I visited the children's home at Draveil the other day. With her was Mr. Sanford Gottlieb who told me he was writing a thesis on the gains made by labor during the Front-Populaire in France.

There is one great difference, of course, between what was accomplished in France and what was gained in the US

The New Deal lasted long enough so that gains were consolidated and it probably never will be possible to return completely to conditions as they were prior to 1933. There may well be some employers who look back with nostalgia upon that pre-depression period, but that is as far as they will probably ever get, for those conditions have gone forever and cannot be retrieved.

Here in France the Front-Populaire did not last long enough. Nothing was firmly established, and to this day I doubt that there has been any large-scale change in the attitude, at least, of older men belonging to the Patronat, which would be the equivalent of our Chamber of Commerce.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, January 11, 1952

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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