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

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NEW YORK, Friday—I went to Philadelphia on Wednesday afternoon to take part in the Evening Bulletin forum. Everybody told me that the whole meeting had been a great success. I spoke at eight o'clock over the air and to a full house in the Academy of Music on the subject, "The UN as an Instrument for Peace." I was followed by Mr. Charles Taft on the subject of "Trade Policies and Their Effect on the Peace of the World." His speech seemed to me particularly effective because he pointed out that some of our business people, while they say they believe in certain ideas, find it a little difficult when it comes to carrying them out. It is carrying things through that really matters in this world of ours today.

On the way over on the train I read an article by Alexander P. de Seversky entitled, "Are We Rearming for Defeat?" The point he brings out is that we are not as quickly developing airplanes which can deliver the weapons we may want to use as are some other nations. He says that it is also the quantity and size of our air force that is the decisive factor, as well as its superiority in speed and power. What good are atomic weapons without the air force to deliver them? What Mr. de Seversky says seems to me to deserve very careful attention, since we have a "new look" in our defenses. This "new look" requires real understanding on the part of our citizens and conviction that we are building the kind of program for defense which will be a deterrent to anyone who might want to be an aggressor.

There has gone out this week from the American Association for the UN a handbook to help our state chairmen and local chapters in their work for the membership and finance drive which will go on through the month of April. I hope that our workers will find this book as useful as it seems to me to be. It ought to help them in their plans for organization of the drive and bring us good results in new membership and more finances for both local, state and national associations.

In connection with our whole program of foreign policy, Mr. Chester Bowles has written a memorandum analyzing the Secretary of State's speech early in the winter on this subject which includes a new attitude towards defense. Among other things, Mr. Bowles mentions the fact that today the Soviet Union is graduating more scientists and engineers than are leaving the schools in this country. This is something we should carefully consider. Here is an area where we cannot afford to lag.

E.R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1954, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, March 13, 1954

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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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
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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.

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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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