The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
DECEMBER 12, 1950
NEW YORK, Monday—The news continues to be none too happy from Korea. None of us can help worrying, but perhaps this period of anxiety may be the best preparation we can have to harden us for the years that lie before us. We must strengthen ourselves in order to strengthen the United Nations. We are the frontier in any war that may come. And being the frontier, we can expect nobody else to carry the first responsibility.
On my television program Sunday afternoon I had some young people asking questions that had been on their minds, and when it was over one young girl came up to me and said: "This program has frightened me, Mrs. Roosevelt. So many people talk as though war might come to our country. I can only remember the last war, but I never thought of it as being in our country, and until this afternoon I never thought that war could actually be in our own land."
Poor children! As you grow up in life you will find that you are nearing the time when those who were your elders and represented the frontier in your own life no longer can be that frontier. They have either died or are too old to carry the weight of responsibility. In the same way there comes a time when a nation has no frontiers ahead to protect it from harm. Our nation is the frontier today, and the decision and weight of responsibility is on our nation.
It isn't a pleasant place to be. Nevertheless, as we accept this responsibility, we must keep on doing the things that bring and hold us together and may, in the future, develop an understanding that will obviate some, if not all, of our present-day difficulties.
In this connection I was glad to receive a book the other day from Nashville, Tenn. It is the story of Youth, Inc. It is the story about guests these American youngsters invited from countries throughout the world to visit with them last summer in camp and on a trip that took in not only Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains but a number of other states between the two flights across the ocean. The project was undertaken to spur the development of friendship among our young people and those from other nations. As one reads about it, one feels sure it must have been a great success. The book is called, "Hands Across the Sea."
Yesterday Mrs. William D. Sporborg came for another visit. She had with her Miss Fannie Hurst, who is just recovering from her fall on the day of the storm two weeks ago, and Mrs. Frederic C. Cooley Jr., who has designed a new kind of scarf and who presented me with two in colors I particularly like. This scarf can be worn in so many different ways that I find it hard to count them even with the little booklet that tells about its many possibilities! One could spend a long time trying out how this scarf will suit best, and when one has two of them it seems like a never-ending experiment!
I was also happy to have a call from Madame Novaes and her daughter. Madame Novaes has just resumed her musical career after the death of her husband. It is a long time since I heard her play and I look forward to that pleasure again.
E.R.
(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1950, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, December 12, 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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