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

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HYDE PARK, N. Y., Monday—I attended a lunch which was held at the Good Housekeeping Magazine office on Friday for a group of brides who are going to meet once a month to discuss problems which come up in their daily living. These are practical problems of personality adjustment and home management where the girl is at work, besides all the varied circumstances which would be apt to occur in a cross-section of the lives of young married people throughout the country. From the questions which were asked me, I realize that many of us have the feeling that we face a world today in which there isn't much use of planning for the future. World conditions may upset at a moment's notice any plan, so why not live from day to day?

This is the war psychology of 1914 which extended over to the years immediately after the war. If you are suspended in space, so to speak, with no security ahead, there is a certain recklessness which is bound to enter your daily living.

It seems to me that in this country we must try to fight this psychology. We must realize that what we did before was to lose sight of domestic problems, to shove aside things which were really vitally important to peace, because we were at war. We must not do that again. We are not at war and whatever happens, the world must eventually be reorganized for peace and let us pray that this time we will have strength and foresight enough to plan a more permanent way of peace.

There will be people in plenty to say this is a pipe dream and cannot be done. Well, I, for one, want to try and I hope there will be many other people who feel as I do. I should like to see an international group meeting now continuously to plan for future peace. I should like to see our nation develop activities in the next few months which will aid humanity and civil populations everywhere and which will create in us an awareness of what war means to the lives of all people. If we have a big enough group in this country, particularly young people, who are conscious of this and determined that this world shall be organized for peace in the future, we can be a great factor in the ultimate adjustment.

We reached home on Friday night in time to greet the President on his arrival. In spite of the fact that he needed badly to make up sleep, we talked until late that night. Yesterday was a quiet day in which as much of the time as could be spared away from the telephone, he spent thinking over plans for the new library.

I drove over to see Mrs. William Brown Meloney on Quaker Hill. In the evening Miss Martha Gellhorn and I talked for a long time with the younger members of the family and their friends. Today it is raining, but everyone is coming to my cottage for a picnic lunch, even though we have to have it indoors. Tonight we return to Washington.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1939, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Geographic
  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, September 11, 1939

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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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
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Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

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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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