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

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PARIS, Monday—After doing a short French recording for the "Voice of America" the other day, I visited the Children's International Center. This is the project where the serum was developed which was used to immunize children against tuberculosis and which probably saved many children in families in which other members of the families were found to have tuberculosis.

This center is primarily a teaching center and I saw a class in operation, with doctors from many parts of the world who were discussing different types of inoculation and vaccination. A great map hangs in the hall as you enter, showing the areas from which people come on fellowships—and they come from all over the world.

I was presented with a book showing a course given last year on the psychiatry of the child and its social implications. All the courses at the center are mapped out for the child. A remarkable modern library and a system of very moderate fees by which the institution is able to keep students in touch with new publications on subjects touching the child has been developed. And the students even get microfilms of some of the latest research.

A new laboratory is now being built and I was told they were considering an American doctor to be resident doctor.

This center is a rather interesting form of cooperation between France and a United Nations agency. The building was given and furnished by the city of Paris, but the controlling board is made up of people from various nations. The faculty is made up of doctors and lecturers from various nations, and they even take their students to different countries for research and study. Running expenses of the project are paid for by the U.N. Children's Emergency Fund.

There was a news item published last week, which, because of its incompleteness, apparently has created some hard feeling and certainly a wrong impression. It stated that a Roman Catholic archbishop in Los Angeles had said that I was not fit to sit on the Commission of Human Rights because I was an agnostic and a fatalist.

He had come to this conclusion because of a radio broadcast on CBS called "This I Believe."

I cannot remember, word for word, what I said but this much was quoted: "I suppose I am a fatalist because whatever happens you have to accept it."

Of one thing I am quite sure, and that is that I never said I did not believe in immortality. That would not be true.

What I was trying to say was that I, like a great many other people, could not definitely state what form immortality would take and that I did not see why people worried about this particular question. There I am a fatalist, for I do not believe in worrying about something I can do nothing about.

The important thing is to live your life to the best of your ability here and to have faith that whatever happens hereafter is the will of God.

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 18, 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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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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