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

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NEW YORK, Thursday—On Tuesday night I went to see a play called "Flight Into Egypt," and it is rather difficult to say just how I feel and think about it. The setting was beautiful and the acting was some of the best I have ever seen. No part was badly done.

But I can see why the American public has not liked the play—it is gloomy from beginning to end.

That, however, is not what makes me hesitate about calling it a really good play. I had a feeling there was something not quite real in the story. The family could have stayed in Austria. Could it have been written about some other country, say, Czechoslovakia, Roumania, Hungary? Would there have been a little more reality if the setting were in one of those countries?

Gusti Huber put on a remarkable performance; so, for that matter, did the other two members of the family, Paul Lukas and Voytek Dolinski. The hotel proprietor could not have been better—and still it wasn't real, at least not to me.

Nevertheless, if you enjoy acting, you should see this play. It has not had good notices and it will not probably have a long run because Americans want to be amused. But I would not have missed seeing the performance, if only for the acting and setting.

I understand Queen Juliana had a wonderful reception at the United Nations Building on Tuesday and that she completely upset the short schedule planned for her by asking to see the kitchen, which could produce 60,000 meals a day, and by wanting to look at all the conference rooms.

I would have liked to have been at Columbia University when she was given her degree. It must have been an impressive ceremony. I am happy that she is taking back a degree from a great university to stand beside the Dutch degrees that she has earned.

Tuesday night the Queen was hostess at the Colony Club at dinner to the U.N. Security Council, and I am sure she gave some good advice to some of the more fiery among that group. Her advice Monday night in her speech before the Netherlands-American Society, in which she said we should make "time our ally" and not be too impatient, was sound advice but something that is hard for Americans to learn to accept. We are impatient people and when we do anything we must see results as rapidly as possible.

There is much searching of heart over the persistent rumor that the United States will abstain in the Security Council from voting to allow the Tunisian situation to be put on the agenda.

Everyone knows that we do not object to questions being brought up in the United Nations for discussion. In fact, we believe in it. And, though most people will understand why we take this contradictory attitude, it seems to serve as a denial of much that has been said both by the President and the Secretary of State.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, April 11, 1952

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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