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

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Hyde Park, Monday—Because there is so much that I want to say, and I cannot always fit it into the column on the proper day, I keep going back.

Last Friday evening I was in New York City for almost five hours, for my apartment served as a reunion place for the members of the two summer institutes sponsored by the International Student Service at Asheville, N. C. and Campobello, Canada.

Some of the students who were at the institutes there were able to remain in New York City for a few days. We had much singing and gaiety, but also some serious discussion on the personal stake of each boy and girl in the war. Most of the boys will soon be in the service. I was interested to find how many of the girls felt that their contribution might be made in factory work.

Sometimes I grow a little weary of the older people, who through the medium of the press, thoughtlessly suggest that everything done for young people today is unnecessary. It is a privilege to fight for your country and the world, but with that privilege must go the assurance that when the war is over, if you survive, you will have a part in creating the conditions under which you want to live.

The fact that we are now obliged to call our youth to this kind of sacrfice, shows that some of us in different parts of the worldfailed to live up to the ideals to which we gave lip-service in World War Number One after it came to an end. Perhaps we did not realize that it meant political and economic changes, not only at home but abroad.

In any case, we were not prepared to face the situation. The boys of today are going into the armed forces as rapidly as they can be equipped, trained and used, and perhaps it is worth while for them to have a conviction as to what they are fighting for. They may fight better. It will help them if they know we really care about their convictions and will continue to carry on the interests which they, as young people, are consecrated to in the future, while they, at present, fight the war.

E.R.

(COPYRIGHT, 1942, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Geographic
  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, August 11, 1942

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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  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
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  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
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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.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

XML master last modified on: June 9, 2017.

HTML version generated and published on: May 3, 2022.

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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