The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
JANUARY 8, 1943
[This column has emendations. View original version]
WASHINGTON, Thursday —I called on Mr. Alexander Woollcott yesterday afternoon and he certainly has found an ideal place in which to work in New York City. It is high up, with a wonderful panorama of the city on every level all about him.
Afterwards I had a few minutes to stop in to see an exhibition of war satires and miniatures by Arthur Szyk at the Seligman Galleries on East 57th Street. This exhibition is sponsored by the Writers' War Board. I know of no other miniaturist doing quite this kind of work. In its way it fights the war against Hitlerism as truly as any of us who cannot actually be on the fighting fronts today. I cannot say you would enjoy the exhibition, but I am quite sure you would find it extremely interesting.
In the late afternoon I met with a group interested in child care in the Civilian Defense Volunteer office of Greater New York. I do not know whether I had much that was helpful to tell them, yet I feel that in some ways we are doing as much for the care of small children and older children in this country as is being done in Great Britain. Necessity drives the British to have more day nurseries and resident nurseries—and possibly better ones. But I think we probably have more possibilities for recreation for every age, even though we have not yet begun to use them to the full extent that we will in time.
They are doing more all the time in Great Britain with the fourteen to eighteen-year-old youngsters who are out of school and not yet of draft age. But the pressure of war needs has made this program develop rather slowly over there, and I think the basic fact that we keep our children in school longer is of great assistance to us.
Another committee meeting in the evening and I made the midnight train back to Washington.
I told my husband this morning the story of a young Marine I met in Syracuse, which I thought would please him. I noticed that in getting out of the car at the university and moving about from place to place there was always the same young Marine opening the door, so I finally stopped to ask him whether he was connected with the university.
His answer was: "No, ma'm. I'm home on furlough, but I heard you were coming in town and they teach us that wherever you and the President are, the Marines have to look after you, so I came right on down to do that till you leave town." The President remarked that that was truly the spirit of the Marines!
We are just off for the Capitol.
E.R.
COPYRIGHT, 1943, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, January 8, 1943
Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007
Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project
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.
XML master last modified on June 9, 2017.
HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.
TMs, AERP, FDRL