If You Ask Me
by Eleanor Roosevelt

I think your son and the girl should go to her parents. It is their story, not yours, that has to be told. Then you and her parents could talk the situation over. It would seem to me that if you are able to do so, you would want your son to finish his education so as to be as well prepared as possible to take care of the girl he marries. Her parents, I should think, would feel that they wanted her to finish her education so that she would be well prepared to be a good wife.

In addition, two or three years may make a very great difference in both of them and the fact that they had to wait to marry until they were able to earn a living would probably mean a happier future for them and give them time to mature and realize that marriage is not just a question of physical attraction but a life companionship into which many other things have to enter if their lives are to be useful and happy together.

I think perhaps your husband is right in feeling that the boy and his parents would prefer not to have you give stated sums of money toward the support of your daughter. They certainly would not object to your giving presents now and then, as you are able, either small sums of money for specific things the young couple need, or some things for the baby. That would not hurt the boy's feelings or make him feel he was less the breadwinner and responsible for his family.

I am afraid before I married I did not know much about political parties. I was very fond of my uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt, and admired him greatly as a person. As far as knowing what the Republicans or Democrats stood for, I fear my knowledge was nil. My bringing up in my grandmother's home was completely lacking in any kind of political education. Women did not have the right to vote at that time, and my interests lay along many other lines.

It was not until we were on our honeymoon and went to visit some Scotch friends where the lady of the house asked me to explain our form of government that I realized I was deficient in the most elementary knowledge of my own country's government. From that time on I began to study and become better educated, though I cannot say I have had the hidebound feeling which some people seem to acquire about belonging traditionally to one party or the other.

I am afraid there are no ten books which will educate anyone. Education is not merely a question of reading ten books. You might get from a library a list of ten books that everyone should read, but that would not mean that because you read them you were educated. Education goes on all the days of our lives and is acquired not only in school but in actual living.

Naturally if the bodies are going to be brought home they must be brought home by the Government. One does not approve or disapprove of this. Different people feel differently about it. I happen to belong to a family whose members have always wanted to be buried where they died, but I know many people who feel differently and I think it is a question for individuals and their families to decide.

I doubt that we can find a way to reach the Russian women at the present time. Communications are very difficult between our two countries, information is restricted and friendship is not encouraged.

I wish it were not so, but I feel that any effort to break the barriers down would be looked upon with a good deal of suspicion and be entirely unsuccessful.