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

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ST. CATHERINES, Ontario.—I left New York around noon Saturday for Chicago where I made a talk in the evening and in the afternoon had the pleasure of visiting for a short time with Adlai Stevenson.

Stevenson has taken defeat as I knew he would—philosophically, with a long look into the past and into the future and with a greater interest in what will happen to the country and its people than in himself.

It seems a shame the talents and minds of our defeated candidates are not utilized. Of course, Senator Estes Kefauver will be active in the Senate, so we do not lose his services. But I sometimes wish that we would be a less wasteful nation and follow certain precedents for the utilization of both parties in the field of foreign affairs.

For instance, Ambassador Warren Austin, a good Republican from Vermont, served many years with distinction and ability as head of the United States delegation to the United Nations under President Truman. Apparently there then was never any real clash of objectives in this foreign field.

Whether this could be done under the present Administration is something only the President can decide.

I took a plane Sunday morning from Chicago to Washington where, as usual, my dear friend, Mrs. James Helm, met me and took me to her apartment.

After a delightful luncheon, we attended the service at the Cathedral to dedicate the Woodrow Wilson memorial. My old friend, Bernard Baruch, spoke and I read a passage from John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress." It is one of my favorite passages and was particularly suited for that occasion.

Woodrow Wilson never gave up his ideals in his pilgrimage on this earth, and I am sure that when he passed over, "the trumpets sounded for him on the other side."

I was home in New York early Sunday evening, spent a busy Monday morning there, then left for Schenectady, N. Y., on a lecture tour which will carry me to various parts of the country but bring me home again by Friday afternoon.

Two books have come my way lately which I think people will find "must" reading.

One is "The Big Thaw," a personal exploration of the "new Russia" and orbit countries by C. L. Sulzberger. The author has been a foreign correspondent for 19 years, during 10 of which he headed the New York Times foreign service bureau. He now writes the foreign affairs column in the New York Times and has been back only a short time from a trip through Russia's empire.

The other book is autobiographical. It is "I Wonder as I Wander" by Langston Hughes, the world's most famous Negro poet.

No one who really wants to understand human nature will miss this book. It is such a very human document and full of interest, insight and adventure.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1956, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, November 14, 1956

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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Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

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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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