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

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LONDON, England.—The wave of economy making itself felt in the United States Senate seems to be directed at the wrong things, and I think Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was entirely right in his appeal to restore to their original sums some of the cuts made by the House.

In our economy, we tend to cut out the good things. And while I am quite sure there are ways to economize in Federal spending, I do not think one of them is to cut foreign aid, or aid to schools and health programs, or any of the things that are of real importance in the daily lives of our people.

It is remarkable to hear of a Congressional group returning parts of its appropriation because it has not been spent!

But such was the case with the five-member special committee of the Senate which selected the five former outstanding Senators so that their portraits might be hung in the Senate's own Hall of Fame.

The committee, after selecting Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Robert A. LaFollette and Robert A. Taft, returned $9,466.68 from its appropriation.

I wish that the committee's list had included George W. Norris, for I have always felt that he was one of our greatest Senators and I would like to have it so recorded.

But I do know how difficult was the task assigned to the committee. In choosing Clay, I suppose it had to pick Calhoun, and the selection of LaFollette was balanced by Taft's.

It was interesting to note Marshal Tito's condemnation of violence in the Communist system in a May Day interview with a reporter from the Yugoslav newspaper, Borba.

What Tito actually said is that "dictatorship of the proletariat should be deeply interwoven with humanism," adding that it is wrong for Communists, when they come to power, to take revenge on representatives of the old regime.

This seems to be a most advanced and enlightened point of view.

I suppose the Communists would dislike having it said that this is a Christian attitude. But forgiving one's enemies, and believing in our enemies' right to disagree with us with the conviction that if we are right they eventually will see the error of their ways, is what makes democracies and Christians patient. They are willing to wait for the persuasive effects of public opinion rather than turn to the use of force.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1957, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 3, 1957

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.

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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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