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

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WASHINGTON, Sunday—I had a delightful luncheon on Friday with the New York Newspaper Women's Club and then returned to my apartment in time to do two good hours of work. When I am not seeing a succession of people, it does seem easier to concentrate on writing an article, so Friday and Saturday afternoon I really felt I accomplished a good deal.

From London, we have just received a complete file of the Army newspaper, "The Stars and Stripes, "which became a daily while I was in Great Britain. Some of their reporters wrote about my trip, and one or two followed me around a good part of the time. Mr. Dorsey Fisher, of the United States Embassy, thought I would like to see the editions covering the days I was there and immediately after I left.

I think this paper is a very interesting and informative news-sheet. It carries on well the traditions begun in the last war by the paper which Mr. Alexander Woollcott edited, and on which Mr. Stephen Early and many other friends of ours worked.

Last night I returned to Washington, but there are a number of things which I-did during the time I was in New York City, which I did not mention before. I was able to see Maxwell Anderson's play, "The Eve of St. Mark," and found it most absorbing.

It is curious how people are always impressed by the particular point in which they are interested. A friend of mine told me that this play taught the lesson of what unpreparedness cost us, and that never again must we allow ourselves to be unprepared in a military way. He is one of the people who hopes we shall always have universal military service for every boy during some period of his early life.

I feel that a period of service to the nation would be good for all of us, though I hope it will not be a purely military period. I have a great appreciation for the need for discipline and basic training in military methods, but above all, I believe we must develop the realization of every individual's responsibility in a democracy for his government. To me any period of training should stress this very clearly and should include service to the community. I believe both boys and girls should receive such training.

Going back to the play, I felt that it brought out the value and importance of personal relationships in life. It showed that, in moments of crisis, the life one had lived at home, and the people one loved, not only helped one to the right decisions, but saw one through to the end.

I also was one of the panel for an International Student Service meeting at Hunter College last evening. It always is encouraging to find young people devoting their time to searching for their proper place in today's difficult world.

E.R.

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


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, December 7, 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

  • Brick, Christopher (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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