If You Ask Me
by Eleanor Roosevelt

I suppose you should not diet without your doctor's consent, but my diet was very simple. I simply drank less and ate less! I never drink liquor or much wine, but I drank even fewer fluids generally and ate no starches and very moderately of other things.

I think everyone in my family believes in God. I have never heard any of them say they were agnostics or atheists, but I do not ask people, as a rule, even members of my family, what their beliefs are unless they talk about them openly.

I have no explanation for Mr. Wallace's political positions. I have never understood his naiveté in not discovering the actual philosophy of the people he was working with, though I always have believed in his sincerity and I am quite sure he has arrived at his present convictions in a way I cannot comprehend but which for him is completely honest.

I don't think I ever take one because I always write my column and always deal with my mail, but I frequently change my occupation so I never feel the need of what people call complete relaxation. I even think complete relaxation would be a little dull. Time to read everything I want to read is something I seek every summer but never quite succeed in finding.

I am really not interested in any Communists and that was carefully stated in the petition, but I wished to call attention to the fact that the Smith Act, under which these people were sentenced, is from many points of view a dangerous act. Justices Black and Douglas brought this out at the time it was passed. Before the Smith Act was passed people who discussed their ideas but did not try to take action by force against our government were not subject to imprisonment. To curtail our right of discussion may be only a step from accusing people for what they think, rather than for what they do. This is dangerous to the traditions of a free country.

If you don't approve of a law, then you don't feel that anyone is rightfully convicted under that law. That is why I signed the appeal for this small group of people whose influence is about as strong in jail as out—and relatively unimportant.

I very rarely play games, but my family does and so do my friends. I think a very popular game at present is one where the guests divide and write down certain things which the two teams act out. It is something like charades but on the whole more interesting.

No, I would not say so. I do, of course, get a great deal of pleasure from my grandchildren and since I have no feeling of responsibility about their immediate upbringing, it is a more relaxed kind of pleasure than I got from my own children. But I certainly enjoy being with my own children today as they mature more than I do being with the younger grandchildren. The older grandchildren as they begin to grow up are of great interest to me, but in both cases it is contact with my children as people that gives me the most pleasure.

I don't think so. No one has asked me to go, and unless I had a very good reason for the trip I would certainly not go.