Record of Growth
Pickett, Clarence E.
Record of Growth On My Own, by Eleanor Roosevelt. Harper. 241 pp. $4. Reviewed by Clarence E. Pickett T^he Secret Service men assigned to the White House found it very difficult to protect the...
...One has the feeling on reading the account of her activities as a former First Lady that she has made this status must useful in terms of international understanding...
...While her first reaction was that she wasn't well enough informed, her final acceptance was accompanied by a determination to throw herself into the undertaking with full vigor, and the account of her devotion to studying the multitude of "position papers" stating the State Department's views on various issues and her endless interviews with delegates most likely to differ with her views shows why she looks upon these seven years as a U.N...
...Reviewed by Clarence E. Pickett T^he Secret Service men assigned to the White House found it very difficult to protect the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential family at all times...
...I hope that many Americans may have a new birth of civic responsibility as they read this fascinating record...
...While she found much to admire in the Soviet Union, she left that interview with an impression that world conquest by communism still motivates Russian leadership...
...The patience and ingenuity, as well as the craftiness and firmness she exercised in this Commission, are clearly indicated in this effort carried on for nearly seven years...
...One has the feeling that this long-range struggle for recognition of human values, while well and skilfully done, was a harder discipline than visiting child clinics in Japan or Yugoslavia and elsewhere which she so often did in her travels...
...delegate as a period of growth...
...It involved becoming acquainted with the views on human rights of Confucius...
...And remembering the bitterness that swept over America after Pearl Harbor, it is refreshing to the spirit to hear Eleanor Roosevelt say, "Perhaps our best hope is that the Japanese, as well as ourselves, want peace above all...
...This was impressed upon me strongly at the tragic city of Hiroshima...
...She is interested primarily in people—not things...
...Two of Franklin Roosevelt's friends kindly offered to "plan her life" for her soon after the President's death...
...of the Koran, as well as of the Communists...
...And especially was this true of Eleanor Roosevelt...
...And she resolved to feel the hardships families were suffering from first-hand contact and to compensate as best she could for the President's handicap in travel, by honest and frank reporting to him...
...Here too she came upon the hard facts that must be met and overcome in attempting to establish a world concept of "rights...
...To her friends who knew her during that time, the deepening and broadening of her interests since White House days seems entirely natural and appropriate...
...delegation to the Assembly of the United Nations...
...She must be her natural self, a concerned visitor to the scene of suffering, at whatever risk was involved...
...Nothing," says Eleanor Roosevelt, "could have made the weariness drop from my shoulders as did those words...
...They are all read and answered with the help of three secretaries...
...But now we feel we must acknowledge that we have worked with you gladly and found you good to work with...
...The flood of activities has not abated since she is no longer the wife of a public servant...
...To do this she could not travel under Secret Service escort...
...delegation...
...Even more demanding in time and effort are the obligations entailed in being the widow of an American President known widely not only in the United States but in every country in the world...
...She has continued to write her syndicated newspaper column "My Day" begun while she was in the White House...
...Her chairmanship of the Commission on Human Rights especially took hold of her, becoming a personal concern as she sought the means of protecting the rights of "little people" throughout the world...
...She receives an average of 100 letters a day...
...She gives an average of 150 lectures a year in almost every part of this country...
...These are but suggestions of activities the reader will encounter in the book...
...A quite unexpected development in her life came when President Truman asked her (in 1945) to accept appointment on the U.S...
...With thanks for their concern, she rejected the offer...
...She has made many trips abroad and twice has circled the globe...
...She entered the White House conscious of the suffering resulting from the depression...
...The last four chapters of the book are devoted to her visit to the Soviet Union with a full chapter on her interview with Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev...
...Contemplating the fate of Hiroshima one can only say, 'God grant to men greater wisdom in the future...
...While Eleanor Roosevelt remains a loyal member of the Democratic Party household, she felt cheered when Senator Arthur Vandenberg and John Foster Dulles confessed to her that as Republicans who were fellow-members of the U.S...
...Assembly in London, "We must tell you that we did all we could to keep you off the U.S...
...during the U.N...
...delegation to the U.N...
...of Thomas Aquinas...
...She had already decided to simplify her life, to donate the big house on the Hudson estate to the federal government, and to establish her home, not even in the "cottage," which stands on land opposite the big house, but in the reworked barn on that property...
Vol. 22 • November 1958 • No. 11
