The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
MAY 4, 1957
[This column has emendations. View original version]
LONDON—There is a feeling over here, I am told, that a number of European countries are becoming discouraged with the ability of the United Nations to cope with world problems and that we are leaning toward a return to the old power politics.
I do not think the evidence will bear this out.
For instance, one rather conservative U.S. Senator from a Middle Western state sent a letter to his constituents, asking whether or not they supported the U.N. Eighty-four percent of the answers favored greater support of the U.N.
I personally think that what the U.N. really needs is more leadership by the great nations and implementation of U.N. decisions through the support and power which can be brought to bear by the great nations.
Every time we in the United States act on our own instead of through the U.N. we weaken this great organization. Our country has been saying, for instance, that all nations should act through the U.N. Yet we belie our own words by negotiating outside of the U.N. and by using a show of military power to further our position.
Jordan had to be strenghtened and kept free, but I cannot see why this could not have been done through the U.N. as well as it was done by a show of force on our part alone.
The fact of power is undeniable, but how this power is used and how U.N. decisions are implemented depends on the way the great nations decide to work and cooperate within the framework of the U.N. Charter.
It seems sad that a child such as Hildy Ellis has to be the center of such difficulties as have come up about this little girl who, as a baby, was given up by her mother for adoption.
Her mother evidently failed to find out the religion of the girl's foster parents—at least she says that now, although this is difficult to believe. This carelessness on the part of the mother now brings an upheaval into the life of her child.
It seems to me that anyone knowing much about children would feel that the promise to bring up this child in the Catholic religion and to send her to a convent school—a promise made by the foster parents—is sufficient assurance that her religion will not be sacrificed.
To destroy this little child's bonds of family life, formed over a period of years, and to place her in an institution—which never can be as good as a family for any child—seems a sad solution to the original wrong done by her mother.
E.R.
(Copyright, 1957, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)
About this document
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 4, 1957
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