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

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WASHINGTON, Sunday—It is a curious thing that when you feel you have some free time and will do a great many long hand letters, the day passes by and you haven't done any. I thought yesterday I had a morning in which I could catch up on my correspondence but between one thing and another, the morning slipped away and I had only written one letter. I went over to the luncheon given by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and The Emergency Peace Campaign. I had met and heard Miss Royden speak in 1928 and welcomed the opportunity of hearing her again, particularly as all I was asked to do was to say a few words of greeting.

I think she is discouraged as many of us are as we look around the world today and see how little we seem to have learned from our experience in the World War. She has come over as the guest of The Emergency Peace Campaign and is to speak I believe, in forty cities. The gathering of people to hear her yesterday was a representative and important gathering, and I feel that groups such as that can not fail to carry weight in their various communities. She made two statements which stand out in my mind. One was that no one could help but love their own country best, but that that did not mean that you had to hate other countries. It should mean a better understanding of other countries, and a realization that other people feel about their country as we feel about ours. Secondly, she made the plea if war came to Europe, America should not join. We had joined in the last war and what good had it done? Better to keep at least a part of the world sane. There was general agreement with her.

Some people came in for tea in the afternoon and I went out to dine with a friend leaving my husband and the two boys to a cozy dinner in his study. On my return very early, I found the President still busy with his mail and both boys getting ready for bed. Franklin, Junior is getting his strength back rather slowly. He expected to go south tomorrow but his departure has been postponed for a few days. This morning he ate his breakfast in my sitting room with Chandler sitting in his lap. When it was over the children induced him to play hide and seek with them. He laid down the rules, telling them they could only hide on the second floor and that they would count in my room, so they couldn't see where any one was going. All his careful arranging was useless. They paid no attention to rules, and finally he gathered them together on the floor in the middle of the room to look at the pictures in the paper, having decided that he didn't want to run all over the house!

E.R.


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, January 11, 1937

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

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
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  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
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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 draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated January 10, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 10 January 1937, AERP, FDRL