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

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NEW YORK, Friday—I have really reached a point where I begin to feel I must get ready to leave on my trip to Japan and on around the world and yet I haven't done really much in preparation. I suppose, as usual, the last moment before I go I will be up in the wee small hours writing checks and paying last-minute bills.

It seems too bad that the United States and Great Britain seem to be going through one of their periods of mutual denunciation. In the long run, when the chips are down, England and the U.S. always stand together, but we do have difficulty in seeing eye to eye on matters between times.

On the Korean situation the suggestion made by Great Britain that, since the talks on armistice had been left in the hands of American military leaders, it might be well to draw in some of the other United Nations involved, seems to have created a violent stir in the Senate and the suggestion that this move might bring about "a Far Eastern Munich."

I had not felt that this was the meaning of any of the words I had read coming out of Great Britain.

Personally, I don't think we should accept any Communist proposals unless we think they are right, but I don't think either that we should assume the attitude that every Communist proposal is wrong, just because it is a Communist proposal. When compromises have to be reached, both sides usually have to give up something.

I realize full well that the attitude on the Chinese question, held by some people in Great Britain, is certainly different from some of the ideas that certain people in this country hold. Probably in each country eventually the majority opinion finally will be ascertained, and I believe the objectives which underlie these differences are not as far apart as the methods by which each group thinks these objectives can be obtained.

Everyone wants peace but it is the question of how we get peace that is really causing much of the conflict between groups in the U.S. and groups in the United Kingdom. With all the attacks on each other's ways of doing things, and even on individuals within our countries, we always know that in the present-day world when real difficulties come we will have to stick together.

I had the good fortune to go to a private showing the other day of a motion picture called "The Juggler." It is beautifully photographed. I am sure the pictures must have been actually taken in Israel where the picture was laid.

The story is heartbreaking in spots, but in the end it shows what kindness can do even for a sick mind and soul which have become so because of cruelty. The juggler was fundamentally a good man, but what he had gone through had filled him with horror and he was helped finally only by love and justice. It is a good picture.

E.R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 16, 1953

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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