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

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HYDE PARK, Tuesday—I got up very early yesterday morning—at least, very early for me, though I realize that all around me people are astir by 6 a.m. When I do get up early, I wonder why we all don't do it all of the time. The country is so beautiful and the air is so fresh in the early morning, and you realize that you were intended to get up with the sun and probably to go to bed with it. Only, all of our modern inventions make us able to turn night into day!

I didn't, however, stay in the country. I travelled to Philadelphia to make a speech for the United Jewish Appeal. Both going and coming, I read many things which I had been carrying around in my briefcase, trying to find a few minutes in which to read them.

The $170,000,000 which the Jewish communities are being asked to give, to aid their unfortunate brethren in different parts of the world, is a tremendous amount for any one group in the nation to gather together for one special cause. If it absolved them from all other contributions, that would be different, but they are called upon, just as all other citizens are, to contribute to many other causes. The burden on this group of our citizens is a heavy one, and I marvel at their generous giving.

* * *

I have seen very little in the papers about an item which I found very interesting. I read the other day that Gov. Thomas E. Dewey is setting up scholarships for students in public administration, with the idea of providing better-equipped people as administrators in New York's state, county and local governments. When I was last in San Francisco, I met a group who, through a private gift, were being enabled to study city administration with the cooperation of the San Francisco government.

I suppose that not all of those who avail themselves of these New York scholarships will actually become public officials. Some of them may be teachers in government courses, but the practical experience which they will absorb will enable them to prepare their pupils far better than before. And I think this is a farseeing and enlightened policy which Gov. Dewey is inaugurating in the state government.

* * *

I must have expressed myself badly in the column which I wrote recently on the use of military force by the United Nations, since a very able columnist seems to think that I was not aware that the veto power, as it now stands in the Charter, could prevent the use of military force by the U.N. against any one of the great nations.

I wanted to make two things plain—first, that as we came to understand this clearly, we might want to change some of the Charter provisions on this particular subject. The Constitution of the U.S., for instance, has been amended a number of times. And secondly, I wanted to say that already there are signs that the great nations are learning to use their veto power more intelligently and less frequently—which is an improvement if not an ideal solution.

E.R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1947, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.; REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 21, 1947

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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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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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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