The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project is a university-chartered research center
associated with the Department of History of The George Washington University
Eleanor Roosevelt's Response to UN appointment
"My Day"
December 22,1945
NEW YORK, Friday - - Now that I have been confirmed by the Senate(1),
I can say how deeply honored I feel that President Truman
has named me one of the delegates(2)
to the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization.
It is an honor, but also a very great responsibility. I
know it has come to me largely because my husband laid the
foundation for this Organization through which we all hope
to build world peace.
In many ways I am sure I will find much to learn; but
all of life is a constant education. Some things I can take
to this first meeting - - a sincere desire to understand
the problems of the rest of the world and our relationship
to them; a real good-will for all peoples throughout the
world; a hope that I shall be able to build a sense of personal
trust and friendship with my co-workers, for without that
type of understanding our work would be doubly difficult.
This first meeting, I imagine, will be largely concerned
with organization and the choice of a site within this country
as a permanent home.
Being the only woman delegate from this country, I feel
a great responsibility, also, to the women of my own country.
In other lands women have gone with their men into the fighting
forces.(3) Here we have more
nearly followed the traditional pattern of working and waiting
at home.
To be sure, some of our work was done outside the home
in places which the mothers and wives of earlier days never
would have dreamed could be a working women's sphere.(4) But fundamentally we were doing what
we could to help our men win the war. We were striving to
give them, when they returned, the kind of country and the
kind of home they had dreamed of and sometimes gave even
their lives to preserve.
I feel a great responsibility to the youth who fought
the war, when they were not called upon to make the supreme
sacrifice, they gave years of their lives which most of
them would rather have spent in building their personal
futures. Some of them will carry handicaps incurred in fighting
the war, throughout the rest of their lives. Every one of
us has a deep and solemn obligation to them which we should
fulfill by giving all that we are capable of giving to the
making of the peace so they can feel that the maximum good
has come from their sacrifice.
Willy-nilly, everyone of us cares more for his own country
than for any other. That is human nature. We love the bit
of land where we have grown to maturity and known the joys
and sorrows of life. The time has come however when we must
recognize that our mutual devotion to our own land must
never blind us to the good of all lands and of all peoples.
In the end, as Wendell Wilkie said, we are "One World"(5)
and that which injures any one of us, injures all of us.
Only by remembering this will we finally have a chance to
build a lasting peace.
I am sure in President Truman's heart, as in that of everyone
of our delegates, is the prayer that in this coming year,
we may make measurable strides towards good will and peace
on earth.
TMS, AERP, FDRL
Editor's Notes:
Majority Leader Alben Barkley polled the Senate, at Truman's request, to see if the Senate would
confirm ER. He found some opposition (John Foster Dulles thought her too liberal and William Fulbright thought
her so inexperienced that her appointment could signal disrespect for the UN); however, only Theodore Bilbo, who
objected to her civil rights positions, voted against her confirmation. (Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor: The Years Alone
[New York, 1972], 37; Alfred Steinberg, Mrs. R.: The Life of Eleanor Roosevelt [New York, 1958], 320.
In addition to ER, the members of the American delegation were Senators Tom Connally and Arthur
Vandenberg, Secretary of State James Brynes, and United Nations Ambassador (and former Secretary of State)
Edward Stettinius. The alternates included John Foster Dulles, who was Thomas Dewey's advisor on foreign policy.
(Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [New
York, 2001], 27.)
During World War II, Soviet women engaged in combat in every branch of the armed forces. Their
service as combat pilots was especially notable.
Two million women, encouraged by the Rosie the Riveter campaign, worked in defense plants building
aircraft and destroyers and manufacturing weapons and a wide variety of military necessities. By 1943, half of the
workers at Boeing's Seattle plant were women. (Nancy Woloch, Woman and The American Experience [New York,
1994], 460.
Wilkie, though defeated by FDR in 1940, accepted FDR's 1942 request to fly around the world to show
that political opponents were united in their determination to defeat fascism. Wilkie visited at battle zones in Africa,
the Soviet Union and China and described his goodwill journey in One World. Published in 1943, it quickly became
an influential plea for post-war international cooperation.