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

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NEW YORK, Friday—We passed a resolution in the Human Rights Commission yesterday asking the Economic and Social Council to grant us time during the coming year to finish the two covenants and measures of implementation. This should mean that there will be no discussion of the unfinished work either in the Economic and Social Council or in the General Assembly this year, but that we will proceed to complete the work in the Human Rights Commission and bring it in its final form before our parent bodies in 1953.

If this is the way it actually works out we will save a great deal of time. If our work is discussed in its unfinished condition in both the Economic and Social Council and in Committee 3 of the General Assembly, only recommendations can be made. Those recommendations were made last year, so it would be a waste of time to do it all again before the final work of the Human Rights Commission is over.

It also was suggested that we ask for a divided period in our next year's meeting in order that we might be sure to finish the other items on our agenda, which year by year have been postponed. We did not reach the discussion of any new articles for the convenants, and there are several new articles that must go in before the covenants are really complete.

We had an absurdly long argument about whether the articles as they now are should be temporarily rearranged and renumbered, with the understanding that this was not a final order or sequence and that if new articles were introduced we were not prejudging their positions in the covenant. But the mere numbering of new articles seems to frighten the Soviet delegate and he argued for a long time that they just go in with a description of what they contained over each article.

Finally, we are finished, except for the reading of the report, which will take place today.

Thursday night we went to see Helen Hayes in "Mrs. McThing." What an enchanting fantasy, and how beautifully Helen Hayes plays the part!

The little girl, Mimi, completely won my heart. Both children in the play have moments of stiffness, however, but when they were natural they were completely entrancing. I had a most delightful evening and look forward to taking some youngsters to see this play fairly soon, for I am sure they would love to live in this world of make-believe.

Who among us, when we were young, did not live a hundred different lives and impersonate a hundred different people in our daydreams? Those daydreams are the basis for Mrs. McThing! Mothers have to be witches sometimes, but in little girls' and boys' eyes they have to be lovely, too, most of the time.

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, June 14, 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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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.

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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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