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

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MONTREAL, Thursday—I saw in the newspapers that President Eisenhower has decided to set up a pool for the development of the peacetime uses of atomic energy outside of the United Nations. I am distressed that we are doing this on what must of necessity be a more limited basis than if we worked within the U.N. I suppose the plan is necessitated by the fact that the Soviet Union has not been willing to join in this project. Since the USSR is a U.N. member, it would be difficult to set up a project inside the U.N. without Russian participation.

Perhaps the announcement—that it will be done in any case—may bring the Soviet Union to a realization that it would be to their advantage that this project should be done within the U.N., and for them to be one of the cooperating nations.

The Soviet Union makes great protests that they are the one great nation really interested in the development of peace. Yet, when they make any concrete offers toward disarmament, these offers are always in the areas which would leave the Soviet Union stronger than their neighbors. For instance, reduction of all armaments by a third would leave them stronger than all the combined European nations.

The Russians' constant refusal to have any inspection within their country means that they create in other nations a sense of distrust, precisely because they are not willing to have an international group vouch for the fact that their words and their deeds coincide. If they once could understand that inspection will not hurt anyone, since everyone will submit to it, they might be willing to participate in the innocent pool of atomic material for the study of how it can be used to improve the lot of human beings in peace. Then they might even reach the point of coming to some agreement on a broad overall control by the U.N. of this very dangerous weapon, that can wipe out the world. That includes the Soviet Union as well as the United States.

On Wednesday, I spent the morning at the American Association for the U.N. I had the pleasure of being shown the plans for a public school which, when built, will be named after my husband. It will be a school of the most modern type, and I hope it will contribute to the education and happiness of many New York City children.

I noticed a little item in the newspaper stating that Mississippi is moving toward the abolition of public schools. This will undoubtedly lead to months of litigation, but I hope, in the long run, that nowhere in this country will our children be deprived of a public school education.

E.R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1954, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, September 10, 1954

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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