If You Ask Me
by Eleanor Roosevelt

No. I cannot say that I miss the hustle-bustle routine or the comings and goings that were part of my life when I lived in the White House. I never have lived a very quiet life, and I cannot say that life is very quiet today. I keep busy enough so that I have very little time for wishing life might be something different.

I am not much of a believer in organizations which do not include both men and women. I think that an organization which had a great number of women working in it, with men, would probably be more effective than an organization very largely composed of women working for peace, as has often been the case in the past.

You have asked me an impossible question. This is something which two people must decide for themselves. No outsider can tell what the situation is, nor what the necessary adjustments would be. Only you and your husband and children can decide whether the sense of satisfaction which a job would bring you would mean that your home would profit by it as well as your own ego. I am afraid I am no Beatrice Fairfax. This is something which you and your husband and children will have to decide.

I doubt very much whether your daughter would profit by going to college if she really does not want to go. Why don't you let her work for a year? Then she might find out what she wants to do in life and what advantages college might have for the particular thing she is interested in. Many girls who marry and run a home and never expect to hold a job or have a career find that college training would have been invaluable in the home. Until she finds it out, however, and really knows how she wants to use these years in college, it seems as though you would be making a sacrifice and your daughter might get very little out of it.

I really know very little about this question, but I should think if both husband and wife had consented to this type of treatment, it was a question for them to decide and also of no interest to others, and should not be known to anyone but themselves and the doctor.

I do not remember ever having been so unwise as to say, "I told you so." I think I was usually so mindful of the many times when I had done exactly the same thing myself that I was not tempted to bring the question up. Besides, when those you love suffer, even though you may have tried to explain to them that it might happen, you cannot help feeling sad with them and not wanting to add to their pain.

I do not think any European children are being brought here for temporary care. Children are being brought here for permanent care and for adoption. I would advise you to write to the United States Committee for the Care of European Children, 215 Fourth Avenue, New York City.

My husband read very widely even as a very young child. I think that Mrs. Lex and Mrs. Ailshein had a lot to do with his sense of resourcefulness. Outside of that, I think it was his reading of biographies of naval character that probably had the greatest influence on his character.

As far as I am concerned, I really do not know. I read everything and anything I could find in our library, mostly classics, of course. Just what influence they had on my character I really do not know, but Dickens, Scott and Thackeray were all old friends before I was fifteen years old.

I think you are much too pessimistic. I do not think for a moment that there will be in this country a reign of terror. There is too much recognition of the fact that there is something that needs to be fought and too many people who would feel that the whole fabric of this nation was falling apart. If such things as happened in Germany were to begin to happen here, many of us would feel the purpose underlying the founding of our nation had been negated.

I think your mother is a very wise woman. Sixteen is very young. You do not realize it now, but you have plenty of time ahead of you to go bowling and dancing. Your health is important today, and if you do not have all the experiences and all the pleasures at the age of sixteen which you desire, you will enjoy them much more when you are a couple of years older. What is more, the young men will find you more interesting because they will not have had a chance to get tired of you.