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

[Original version of the column. Text in red are tagged with <sic> (needs correction); text in purple are tagged with <orig> (needs regularization); and text in blue are tagged names of persons or organizations. View emended version]

      

HYDE PARK, Sunday—Out here in the country the driving is so precarious that just as soon as we had heard the new year rung in over the radio on Friday at midnight and had made our usual toasts and New Year's wishes, our party broke up. As a result, for me, the New Year's Day began with a greater sense of pleasure when my two little dogs began to stir and tell me plainly that it was time that I bestirred myself and took them for their usual early morning walk!

It is worthwhile waking early in winter because the sky is nearly as beautiful at sunrise as at sunset. I have been lucky enough to see it a number of times in the last few weeks and each time I wished that we could return more or less to some of the habits of our earlier ancestors who, when the fire died down and they no longer could see by that light, went to bed and, therefore, woke earlier in the morning!

Now that the new year has begun, one reads the more serious writers on the international scene and one feels more and more keenly how important this year of 1949 may be to civilization.

I become more and more convinced that item number one on our agenda must be an understanding in the East-West situation that will make not just armistices and truces possible throughout the world, but real peace.

Our economy and Germany's economy would benefit by real peace. The same is true of Greece; the same is true of Isreal; the same is true of Indonesia, and certainly the same is true of China.

This peace waits because the East and West cannot reach a point of agreement. Confidence that will enable the building up of strength of a tangible military kind in the United Nations and give the breathing space that is essential to the economic situation in the various countries must be provided shortly to achieve that real peace.

Our own newspapers say that forecasts for business for the coming year are very favorable. That does not mean, however, that we can continue tremendous military expenditures and the support of economies the world over without feeling the strain in our own country.

These two points of the foreign and domestic situation are very closely tied together and our domestic well-being is dependent to a great degree on the wise solutions obtained in the international field.

The best brains in our country should be called upon in these coming years to make a contribution from the point of view of the world-wide situation. I doubt if it can be done by the U.S. Congress alone or by any administration without some kind of bringing together and co-operation of people on a world basis to evaluate the situation both from an economic and a military standpoint and to map the steps that must be taken to meet the situation wisely.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1949, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC., REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Organizations
Geographic
  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]
Other Terms and Topics


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, January 3, 1949

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

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)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
    [ ISNI ]
  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ISNI ]
  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]

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: May 2, 2022.

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.
TMs, AERP, FDRL