If You Ask Me
by Eleanor Roosevelt

If I can possibly do so without being rude or making people uncomfortable, I try to pick up the remarks and reason them out. But if this cannot be done, I usually try to leave that particular house as soon as possible.

No.

My husband disliked writing longhand letters, except for brief business or personal memos. Temperaments differ. He was very slow to anger, but when he was angry it shook him to the bottom of his soul and he was more apt to take his anger out in cold and never-to-be-forgotten words than in any impulsive way.

To the ordinary criticism affecting him and his family he rarely paid any attention. He taught us all to believe that it was better to ignore criticism. He lost respect for some writers and critics and then rarely read what they said, so, of course, they bothered him little. He also advised us to look with care for any constructive criticism, but if it became particularly carping to ignore it and never answer it.

His illness had given him extraordinary self-control in personal matters. When matters affecting affairs of the country were at stake, and in periods of tension and pressure, he practiced this same self-control. He suffered when things went wrong with the family, though those personal things were quickly swallowed up in the much more important things that touched the country as a whole.

Yes, very often. We are apt to behave unnaturally and a little pompously, and that is really what makes us a subject for the cartoonists.

I am afraid there is nothing that soldiers or their wives can do about the commanding officer of their own camp, but outsiders in the community can. If such conditions exist it ought to be possible for a prominent member of the community to protest, and that would undoubtedly bring about a change.

Yes. I ate as little as possible, but enough fruit and vegetables to keep well. No bread or potatoes or sweets, and no alcoholic or soft drinks.

Yes. I suppose in public life any wrongdoing makes one vulnerable, as nobody wants to figure in a scandal. On the other hand, if one has the courage to acknowledge wrongdoing and makes amends as far as possible, one will find, I think, that an astonishing number of people are not so perfect themselves but they can understand and forgive others’ failings and weaknesses.

I imagine the reason J. Edgar Hoover picked homosexuality is that it is thought of as an abnormality, and people are usually much harder on anything that seems to them somewhat abnormal.

I cannot imagine that it would make the slightest difference. Your local draft board is the place for you to find out. They will tell you what the rules are.

I most certainly do. The benefit they have derived, from my point of view, is the fact that they can exert their direct influence and build up tremendous power because of their vote and that of other women, which can be cast for the things they really care about. Women wield the same power over their representatives that men do, and they carry equal responsibility. I prefer to do that myself rather than rely on persuading the men I happen to know to act as I think they should.

In the late 1920s. I cannot remember that I had a model columnist. I admired the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, and I had read widely as a young person, but I did not have any particular model.