The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
DECEMBER 11, 1950
HYDE PARK, Sunday—In one of the evening papers on Friday there was a story touching on the rumor that all officers in the Far Eastern Command had been asked to refrain from further comment on the progress of the Korean war. This seems to me a fairly reasonable request. I think we might go one step further, however, and ask our magazines, newspapers and other publications to censor their own dispatches, because it seems to me we sometimes print war news in such detail that we give the enemy information which they not only might want to have, but which might take them a long while to discover for themselves.
What a wonderful thing it is that airlifts, which have served so many purposes, have served us in Korea to rescue our wounded men. It must be a terrible strain on the nurses and the crew as well as on the men themselves, but we can be grateful that we have the ships to use for this humanitarian purpose.
Friday morning in Committee Three at the United Nations practically nothing in the way of real progress was accomplished. We were informed by Mr. Cordier of the Secretary General's office that all committees except Committee One would be expected to finish their agenda by Wednesday evening and that the General Assembly itself was slated to close Friday night. In many ways I think it always accelerates work when there is a deadline, but I am not so certain that it will not mean a filibuster by the Russian delegation on the subject of prisoners of war. They can quite easily string that item out by making all their satellites talk for several hours in an effort not to have it voted on before the deadline. It may be that they can be circumvented by parliamentary procedure. But they are pretty good at parliamentary procedure themselves, and I shall be interested to see what they do to prevent this subject from coming to a conclusion.
Korea has made all of us look at books on aviation with greater interest than ever before, and I want to recommend for your attention a book called "A World Airlift," by Elvira K. Fradkin. She suggests the use of a United Nations air police patrol. A number of people who know far more about aviation than I do tell me that it might prove to be a very practical idea for keeping peace in the future.
With Mr. Vishinsky, Mr. Malik and Mr. Arutinian all attacking our democracy and our objectives, and showing the greatest bitterness and hatred for what they term our "dollar imperialism," I hope we are going to make a particular effort to instruct our young people in the values of democracy. Therefore I was glad to see the publication of a book called, "You and Democracy," by Dorothy Gordon, with abundant pictures by Lois Fisher and Carl Murr. I think this is an understandable and readable book and perhaps one that the older people will enjoy reading to the younger ones, since there are some of us who do not feel completely sure that we can put into words the reasons for our own beliefs.
E. R.
(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1950, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.; REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)
Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced
Persons
- Cordier, Andrew W. (Andrew Wellington), 1901-1975 [ index ]
American political scientist and educator; President of Columbia University
[ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST ] - Fisher, Lois (Lois J.), 1905- [ index ]
American illustrator
[ VIAF | SNAC ] - Gordon, Dorothy, 1893- [ index ]
Russian-born American musician, broadcaster, and author
[ LC | VIAF ] - Malik, Charles Habib, 1906-1987 [ index ]
Lebanese philosopher and diplomat; member of UN Commission on Human Rights
[ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives ] - Murr, Karl [ index ]
American illustrator
[ VIAF ] - Vyshinsky, Andrey Yanuaryevich, 1883-1954 [ index ]
Soviet leader
[ LC | ISNI | VIAF | Wikidata | SNAC | FAST | US Nat. Archives | Brittanica ]
Geographic
- [ index ] Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States)
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, December 11, 1950
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.
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