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

      

HYDE PARK, Tuesday—It is very sad that a man so young and so able as Admiral Forrest P. Sherman should have worn himself out, and one can only be grateful to him for accepting such heavy responsibilities in addition to his regular service.

It is always a consolation, I am sure, to the members of a family when a man has died serving his country. But it does not ease the burden of sorrow nor the shock that this sudden death must have been to the admiral's wife. At least he had accomplished what he felt was an important mission and it must have been a satisfaction to all who are looking at the latest Spanish arrangement from a purely military standpoint.

I don't suppose there is any man in any of the services who would not choose to die in the line of duty. Admiral Sherman served his country well and honorably, and this is a time when the country needs men who are willing to serve unselfishly, regardless of personal sacrifice.

Sometimes, as I read the newspapers, I wonder whether the people of the United States are really clearly being called to their high mission at the present time or whether the voices most heard are those who think primarily in terms of money and seem to pay little or no attention to the fact that we are one of the nations in the world called to great leadership.

Even politics and business-as-usual must pause for a minute while we consider what that leadership really means.

I was shocked by Senator Taft's speech in which he spoke of Korea purely in terms of the monetary cost. I realize only too well what the sacrifice in human lives has been, but I think something should be said to those men and their families of the very wonderful thing they have done to take us one step further in the fight to establish collective security and to make it clear to all aggressors that in the future an attack on any weak nation will immediately bring a defense in which all the nations within the United Nations will carry their share. In the present effort the shares are not equitably divided, but it has led the United Nations to study how that division can be better made in the future and to try to get pledges now.

This is one of the cases in which our leadership has counted greatly in strengthening the United Nations and in pointing the way in which we can begin to insure that no one shall use force against the will of the majority of the U.N. members. There are other ways in which we can lead today and help to promote democracy, but because of present conditions they must wait until tomorrow.

E. R.

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


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

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


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, July 25, 1951

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

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)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
    [ ISNI ]
  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ISNI ]
  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]

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.

XML master last modified on May 2, 2022.

HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.

Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
TMs, AERP, FDRL