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

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PARIS, Wednesday —It is not extraordinary, of course, to have the small nations vote for a resolution presented by four of their group, but in the case of the subcommittee, which is now to meet and see if some agreement can be reached on disarmament, the vote was unanimous, even including the Soviet Union. Many of us remember, however, the 14 weeks spent here last spring, with no results of any kind. We hope that in this meeting the Soviet Union is not going to take the stand that compromise means complete acceptance of every word as proposed by the Reds.

It is possible, I think, to clarify and put in simple terms the proposals made by the three major powers. Perhaps Russia can think of simpler ways to do the necessary things, but one thing is sure: the fears of many nations require complete verification of statements. And there is only one way of verifying a statement and that is by allowing a competent international group to examine freely all the countries of the world at any time it wishes.

There is a proposal for an international air patrol, which has been circulated in our delegation. This proposal grew out of a book written by Mrs. Elvira Fradkin of Montclair, N.J., and I think it might well be one of the things our military people would like to examine at the present time.

After a morning of work yesterday, I saw, among other people, a Swiss citizen who is greatly concerned that something be done through the Human Rights Covenant, if possible, for illegitimate children of the world. He says that it puts an undue handicap on these children if they must go through life having on all their papers the notation that the name of the father is unknown. He thinks that might be avoided if, when the father is unknown, automatically the name of the maternal grandfather is used.

This question of the fair treatment of illegitimate children has already come up in the Human Rights Commission but I am not sure that it is one that should receive detailed consideration in a covenant. Perhaps it can only be dealt with on a state-by-state basis, since laws vary from one state to another.

I visited the Sainte Chapelle yesterday, but the sun was not out and, beautiful as the windows are, they are not as beautiful as when the sun is shining.

I bought a lovely silk scarf at a charity sale for the benefit of the orphans whose parents died in the Resistance movement. In the late afternoon I went to an interesting party given in the rooms of Le Figaro, an old and very fine French newspaper. Madame Auriol and many other French writers and artists were present.

Many of these parties are in honor of the United Nations delegates and, therefore attract a great variety of interesting people—foreigners, politicians, artists, etc.

I had an appointment to meet with two members of our delegation before dinner, so Mr. Porter McKeever and I left fairly early after having enjoyed this visit to a newspaper "home," which seemed on this particular occasion far too elegant and beautiful to be used for real work.

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, December 6, 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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