A ROOM OF OUR OWN

...I urged him to try to be constructive rather than destructive, to keep his thinking clear, that that was the only way we could help ourselves and our country...

...Instead of becoming ossified by bitterness, we must stay adaptable, agile, and perpetually alert to keep alive the values we cherish, no matter what the changing conditions...

...The kind of citizens we are ourselves, and which we are trying to train our children to be, must be the basis of any good future world...

...The primary elections indicate the popular desire to throw the "in's" out and, as personified by Thomas E. Dewey, to turn to the opposite of what we have been having...

...Apparently I failed to make clear the very point upon which I am continually harping—namely, the difference between being AWARE of a problem and DOING something about it...

...But that is a fact, bitter or not, and the individual has the choice of shutting his eyes and hoping for the best, or of absorbing it into his thinking and moving from there on...

...To be sure I had the foregoing correct, I looked it up and, such is human frailty, got so fascinated reading on further I almost forgot the job at hand...

...And that's no easy assignment either...

...Two Kinds Of Men I remonstrated with a former Roosevelt admirer who was unleashing shocking vituperation, "But one must not let himself become personally bitter...

...I again felt, as I did at the first reading, that here, frankly abstaining from claims to a cure, was a powerful analysis of the world's malady by an excellent brain, a conscientious mind, and a courageous spirit...

...He emoted, "But I AM bitter, Mrs...

...Outside those spheres, about the best we can hope for is to be as decent individuals as we know how...

...Day by day experience is forcing us' to face facts which most of us preferred to shun until they held us in their grip...

...Phil always used to tell me that speeches did not actuate people, but experience did...

...Noble Sentiments Not Enough Heavens, was I thankful that the young man of the above-mentioned friendly letter had not found me on a day when the washing machine broke down, Sherry came home from school with "Mother, my throat is sore...

...We must face the fact that we are undergoing a revolution and can never turn back the hands of the clock...

...Don't all of us know people, excellent people with splendid principles, from whom we find ourselves wishing to run a mile because they are so unfortunate in their personal relations...

...In other words, those of us who accept responsibility for action in our chosen field, be it co-ops, peace, church work, polities, civic affairs, and so on, appreciate that there are limits to what we can take on and see through...

...I felt now, as I did at the time, that the attacks on the book were motivated partly from dislike of Mr...

...I appreciate how you feel," I sympathized, "because I went through that phase myself...

...It would be an interesting experiment to re-issue that book today under another name and minus the phrase "wave of the future...

...I wrote Phil the other day that he would be appalled at the vindictive bitterness abroad in our land today...

...The impression that "Dewey is a good administrator" appeals, and people do not stop to inquire further...

...La Follette, and I don't care who knows it...

...It is because I am aware of the complexity of*the problem, of the fact that Negro leaders themselves cannot agree as to the best approach to its practical solution, that I have to fall back on my fundamental philosophy toward human associations, enunciated many centuries ago but still not achieved, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them...

...Awareness" wouldn't be all I appeared to lackl For those of us who have always been fighting in the vanguard, this is a particularly difficult time when we feel that we are either marking time or sliding backward...

...Most communities have their individuals who delight to serve on committees for noble causes but who fall down in their day-to-day relations with their fellows...

...A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette READING Anne Lindbergh's Steep Ascent moved me to go back and re-read her Wave of the Future which in pre-Pearl Harbor days rocked not only literary circles, but was passionately denounced by people who had never read it...

...Noble sentiments are not enough...

...which I coped with as I hopped about on a sore foot), while Bob demanded back issues of The Progressive with Katherine Rodell's articles on South America for a school topic, and Judy pawed the air impatiently awaiting a criticism on her theme—"Hurry, mother, I'll be late for school...

...And bitter as the idea is to me, it is my judgment that the disease has got to get worse before it can get better...

...I think we would be surprised at what the experience of the war years has done to people's thinking...

...The difference between a positive and generous attitude, and the application of that attitude to specific instances, cannot be emphasized too keenly...

...Limits To Obligations In an interesting letter recently in our People's Forum the writer, obviously a young Negro writing from his own experience, took exception to a statement of mine that I had not personally lived in an environment of racial intolerance, and he gave examples of discrimination against Negsoes here in Madison...

...It has seemed to me that there are likewise two kinds of people in this world, those who hunger to understand and thus force themselves to face facts, and those whose reaction to a challenge is to protect the status quo, to fear and combat change...

...Within those commitments we have assumed, there are no given hours nor points at which one can call a halt—it's everything or nothing...

...I have had to conclude through years of experience that it is almost impossible for these two types of mind to agree in argument on a theoretical basis...

...In The Steep Ascent Anne Lindbergh quotes a say-- ing that there are two kinds of men in the world, "those who are born to understand us and those who are born to protect us...

...the only hope is the facing of a common act...

...an SOS from the farm, and a week's dearth of letters from the South Pacific on top of it all...

...I want to do the latter...

...Meanwhile, what alternative have we other than to strike a blow when the opportunity affords, and never to lose sight of the fact that no government can be better than the quality of its people...

...With our experience in government and public administration it was a bitter pill to realize that a man who could not administer a peacetime program, who could not delegate authority for the multitude of Federal agencies without insisting that every move be okayed by himself—to watch this man control an international WPA called Lend-Lease and as the final blow, assume actual command of the military conduct of the war— well, it has been frightful to live with...

...Lindbergh and his part in the pre-Pearl Harbor anti-interventionist movement, and in part from fear of the problem which the book itself posed...