A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette ONE OF MY SISTERS visiting me recently commented, "This is a period when individuals and nations are tending to other people's business instead of their...
...What Hope For Democracy...
...Even I have had some telephone calls from women I do not know wanting to see me about reporting "suspicious characters" or "sabotage" in their communities...
...I was further challenged by the answer of the butcher when I asked how his customers were making out under meat rationing...
...In a farming community I know of the neighbors' form of "getting back at" a disliked farmer is to "report him to the Draft Board...
...Nine times out of ten the informer would be flabbergasted at the thought that he had any responsibility other than tattling on the neighbor, and would quickly retreat with "Oh, I wouldn't want to do that...
...At a school meeting recently I was impressed with the attitude of an excellent and highly respected teacher who told our group of parents that she liked to have both the child and the parent come when there was a problem to be discussed, since she would never say behind a child's back what she does not say to him directly...
...A lot of people can't afford to buy the meat even if they have the points, and with the rest it depends on whether they...
...When you get her taken care of adequately, perhaps you will have time to look after others' affairs...
...While we all assume that we Americans run our own affairs, some of our impractical idealists are perfectly, willing to deprive others of the same right...
...I recall so well my mother's response when one of us would complain that another sister wasn't doing her share of the job, "I think you have quite a job on your hands attending to Isabel...
...Problem Of Responsibility This is a very serious problem—the business of deciding where to draw the line between personal and community responsibility, and I feel that it is another instance where each one of us can go to work or ourselves and our families to improve the quality of our citizenship...
...Yet in this nerve-wracking period of not only the anxiety for our loved ones far away but the irritating if petty details of rationing and unaccustomed regulation, it is almost superhuman not to "see how the other fellow is making out...
...As these calls came in, Phil's regular response was to ask the caller to come down to the office and swear out a warrant...
...La Follette, it's about like normal...
...But here again we run smack into the difference in -approach which at present divides so many of us looking into the field of foreign relations...
...The Army in cooperation with the colleges is training thousands of men to administer the various parts of the world when the war is over...
...Well, I'll tell you, Mrs...
...A friend and I, comparing notes the other day, declared that we were disgusted with ourselves for having to spend so much time and thought on these ordinary details of life— so much so that it had become the chief topic of conversation among people who normally take it in their stride...
...I remember people calling him at the office or even late at night at our home to charge a neighbor with being a "bootlegger...
...At that period we were having a "crime wave" connected with the bootlegging industry, and Phil and Glenn Roberts, his assistant, were working day and night to clean up the situation...
...The frank Hollander, Belgian, Czech, or Pole will admit that this can only be done with force, that each country feels adequate, and strongly so, about running its own affairs...
...Early in our married life when Phil was District Attorney of the county in which we live, I had become familiar "with this vindictive or at least timid trait of character...
...Without this priceless quality, what hope for the future of democracy...
...I had just had a telephone call from one of the multitudinous war agencies telling me that a neighbor had suggested that I could take a soldier and his family into our home to live with us...
...A big new sign at the grocer's urges the public to be on the lookout for suspicious characters and to inform the FBI...
...In other words, we always get back to the individual, and those of us who feel impotent for the moment about influencing the course of public affairs are making a definite contribution in the way we handle our own affairs...
...It goes down into the school system with its problem of "cheating" and the giving and receiving of forbidden help...
...On every hand these days we see use being made, just as in the dictator countries, of one of the most unattrac tive and dangerous traits it human character...
...A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette ONE OF MY SISTERS visiting me recently commented, "This is a period when individuals and nations are tending to other people's business instead of their own...
...are good managers or not...
...Naturally they are not going to say much at this stage of the game when the war depends on American resources of manpower and materials, but when the war is over, as surely as daylight comes after darkness, the qualities which have made the Dutch, Belgians, Czechs, Poles carry on their magnificent struggle at frightful cost, will continue to assert themselves in their passion for freedom from foreign management...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 45
