The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
NOVEMBER 27, 1951
PARIS, Monday—After our delegation meeting the other morning, and there being no Meeting of Committee Three, I saw several people.
The CARE representative in Paris came to tell me proudly of their work in different parts of the world and was anxious to find out if they could be more helpful in Korea. Two Moroccan students brought me the greetings of their group and told me a little of the difficulties under which they labor. Then a lady from Washington who has organized a women's league against war came in. She is a devoted and enthusiastic woman and her objectives are the best in the world, but the methods to achieve these objectives seem to me sometimes very difficult to decide on.
I returned to my hotel in time to have Mr. James Yen, who represents the mass education movement which has done such good rehabilitation work in China, lunch with me. He is here on a consultant basis with UNESCO for a short time in connection with their fundamental education drive. UNESCO is making some experiments in education and their pilot project is in Mexico. The question arises of evaluation and going forward. I found Mr. Yen, as usual, stimulating and interesting to talk to, but I had to leave rather abruptly to go to the Palais Chaillot to do a newsreel recording.
Then a short time at the office and at a little after 4 o'clock reached the Quaker center that has been established in Paris. The Quakers have been very fortunate to find a very attractive house with a courtyard in front of it. I met a number of people there who are working in other centers in other parts of Europe, among them one of the British Quakers who went to Moscow last year.
Quakers are convinced that the Soviet attitudes are wrong, but they are also convinced that the attitude on the side of the democracies is not entirely right. I think they search with true humility to try and find God's way in the tangled web of our present relationships and I don't think they have found it as yet!
After I returned from my recent brief visit in Holland I received a letter inviting me to come and visit the Reformed Youth Council of Amsterdam.
Amsterdam was hard hit in the last war. Housing has been difficult there, as it is in every part of Europe, and they say that about 25,000 of their boys and girls "do not get a proper education at home and live under appalling domestic conditions." The Dutch Reformed Church decided it would do something about this and they now have 14 clubhouses for boys and girls in different parts of Amsterdam.
In their letter to me they say: "We fully acknowledge the inevitable necessity for armament, but are still more convinced that the best way to eliminate totalitarianism is not to oppress it but to replace it by the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ."
These clubhouses sound to me much like our settlement houses and they must be doing a good job. They had 336,000 visiting hours, with a variety of activities to their credit last year. Amsterdam is a port, and these good people hope that some port in the United States will adopt this work and give it a helping hand.
E. R.
(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1951, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, November 27, 1951
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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