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

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Seattle, Washington, Monday—I did not have space to tell you yesterday that last Friday, in San Francisco, I also visited the Army Hospital. There are new buildings there too, but on the whole, it gives one less feeling of hurried change than most of the other hospitals. It is evident everywhere that an effort is being made to use all the new scientific knowledge which can contribute to the better care of the men in service.

I would surmise, however, that we are not giving our draftees a sufficiently careful psychiatric examination before they are taken into service, for there seem to be a considerable number of maladjustments which may or may not become liabilities in the Army. In the Navy, too, I have seen some cases of what one might call "nerves."

There seems to be more attention and understanding of these cases once they are in the services than in the pre-induction period. If once they are taken into the services, of course they become a charge on the medical services of our Government.

In the late afternoon in San Francisco, I went to a tea at Pacific House. Mrs. William Denman has been very active in promoting, through Pacific House, closer relations between the various consults stationed in San Francisco and the students who come from so many South American and Far Eastern countries.

These students will all return to their own countries to be ambassadors of good will for us if their experiences here make them really understand this nation and its people. I met a very sweet young Chinese woman who is a student of medicine. She is planning to return as soon as she finishes to work in the rural areas of China.

The flight up on Saturday to Seattle was pleasant and it was a great joy to see Mrs. Dan Honeyman at the airport in Portland. A little later, my daughter and son-in-law and two older children were at the airport to meet me here.

Saturday evening we went out to the State University here, where a meeting was being held for the United Nations team, representing the International Student Assembly held in Washington early in September. I thought all the young people spoke very well. They emphasized the value of a United Nations program, not only to win the war, but to build stronger foundations for peace in the future.

Lt. Ludmila Pavlichenko, the Russian girl sniper, attracts the most attention because she represents something so unusual to us. In her speech she centers her appeal on help for Russia. This is natural, since at the present time Russia is so hard-pressed and we have witnessed such an extraordinarily heroic defense of Stalingrad.

I hope help will be given by us in the way that our military authorities think wise, but I also hope that these young people of the Soviets with carry away with them as a result of their close association with the Dutch, English, Chinese, and Americans, a sense of the value of a United Nations front for war and peace.

E.R.

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


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, October 6, 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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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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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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