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

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HYDE PARK, Tuesday—We have had one very good ambassador in Europe during these past few weeks. She was the President's daughter, who went abroad to sightsee and enjoy herself and have a vacation. Whether intentionally or just because she couldn't help it, she managed to make friends for her country and for her father wherever she went.

The United States can be proud of her grace and charm. Simplicity and kindness is "open sesame" wherever you go, and judging by all that I have heard she has left personal friends and friends for her country behind her.

Among the things that worry people most these days, first and foremost is, "Will we have peace?"

Many people who have asked that question seem to think that a cease-fire in Korea will mean permanent peace. Yet, of course, we cannot count on that. We hope a cease-fire will make possible negotiations that will lead to peace, but it is much too early to sit back and say peace is on its way.

Undoubtedly the United Nations succeeded in upsetting the Reds' timetable in Korea. As far as one can judge, they had decided that that area of the world would fall most easily to Communistic promises. If the United Nations had not stood firm against aggression, Korea and Manchuria would have followed the way of the satellite states in Europe, and the whole of Southwest Asia, once China had been organized, would have followed in the pattern of Communist development. United Nations resistance, however, made this impossible to carry out, but the Kremlin is ever resourceful and it undoubtedly by now has a new timetable and is concentrating on new areas.

There will be delay in Korea, and perhaps nothing much will happen so that our troops will still be concentrated there and on the alert. Whatever the Soviets are planning it is to their advantage that we should be kept busy in as many parts of the world as possible, and since there is so much trouble throughout the world this plan of theirs can be carried out without the Soviets themselves apparently raising a finger.

The Russian plan is simply to indoctrinate some of the people within a country. Then they form a nationalist Communist party. Then they inspire this party with some of the discipline used in the Soviet Union and they are off.

What we can do to counteract these tactics is hard to see. But I believe it lies in giving as much economic aid as it is possible to give so that the countries will begin to realize, as their economy improves, that there is more and better employment for the people, that everyone is getting more food and perhaps more wages and that all this would mean more than the good words and promises of the Soviets. We must be careful, of course, not to do anything that would hurt the feelings of these nations that are as yet not too sure of themselves and therefore adverse to criticism and highly suspicious.

This was a busy day. We were visited by Geum Shaista Ikramullah of Pakistan, and after taking her over to the old house I left her there to go through the library while I returned to greet the members of the YWCA "Conference of Young Workers" who met on my picnic grounds.

Miss Sarah Blanding of Vassar, who came to lunch, later took the Geum to see the college.

E. R.

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


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  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, July 11, 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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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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