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

      

NEW YORK, Friday—I was pleased to receive a little story written by Jane West Walton, telling of my husband's desire to write about John Paul Jones. He collected everything he could find about the Scottish-born American naval officer and found him a most intriguing character. But he never gave enough time to writing about Jones, so I was not surprised to find his little story was not accepted back in the 1920's. In fact, I can recall the occasion. But what amused me was Franklin's characteristic adjustment to his disappointment. He never dwelt on the failures or disappointments in life. He went right on to the next thing that could be done. I think that is what kept him young and hopeful in spirit.

Wednesday I lunched with Mrs. Beatrice Auerback and Miss Florence Harrison after spending a few minutes with the group of women from Hartford, Conn., who were visiting the United States mission to the United Nations. They had heard lectures all morning about the work being done by our representatives and they spoke with appreciation both of the men who had talked to them and of the quality of work about which they learned through the printed reports given them.

Our press representatives at the mission, Porter McKeever and Gilbert Stewart Jr., do a great deal also in informing the people who visit the mission. Of course an important part of their job is to keep the delegates serving in various capacities in touch with the public reaction to the United States positions and to the work which they as delegates are doing. In addition, Richard S. Winslow and his deputy, Benjamin H. Brown, describe very clearly how the work of the mission is carried on, and how they coordinate the activities of so many people who come in for part-time roles as well as the regular people who are serving all the time.

I think it falls to the lot of the mission here to do a great deal of the information work on the activities of the U.N. as a whole.

A letter was sent by a Frederick Anderson the other day to President Truman which said, in part:

"Please I urge you to get the best brains you can quickly—to explain to the people what we are fighting for. Obviously, they don't know or there would not have been the mail count for the Hoover proposal as reported in the current United States News. It was a shocking thing to me to discover that so many Americans completely misunderstood the main issue. I have naturally written my representatives stating my violent disapproval of the isolationist movement, and am asking one hundred or so of my friends to do the same thing."

I wish more people would do as Mr. Anderson has done. If they would even take the trouble to go to our mission to the U.N. or to the branches of the Association for the United Nations when they are in a place where they can do so, it would be helpful. Or they may write to either group. They can get information on almost anything that they find difficult to understand today.

What I think we have to learn is that we have to seek the information. Our papers will not always give it to us because of space conditions or other reasons.

I shall devote a little time tomorrow to the question of what we are fighting for.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1951, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, March 3, 1951

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
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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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