Eleanor Roosevelt – My Day (1944)

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January 25, 1944

New York – (Monday)
Last spring, I called to my readers’ attention a list of books which the National Conference of Christians and Jews published. Mr. Archibald MacLeish has written a foreword for this list, and I think many of the titles will be of interest to thoughtful people all over the country. The Midwest area office is at 203 North Wabash Ave., Chicago, Illinois, and I know that office will gladly distribute this list to anyone who writes in.

While I was having my hair done the other morning, I read through a little volume called The Return by Margaret Rhodes Peattie. On the jacket it says this book is “a vision, a prophecy, a hope. It is the story of a great day, the day that every American is waiting for.” There is joy and pathos in the book, but the delicate feeling for all people will be a help in understanding the changes that on that day, Victory Day, many of us will meet and will continue meeting long after it has come and gone.

The brief reference in one of the sketches to the old-time civilian occupations which have been curtailed or have entirely disappeared during the war, is a renewed warning to all of us that every community must plan now for that day, and must not leave to chance the future of its returning soldiers. We must move from war production to peace production smoothly, and with as little time as possible for idleness in between.

I have also just seen Mr. Nathan Straus’ book, The Seven Myths of Housing. It is a clear and courageous exposition of the problems and solutions confronting us in housing as he sees them. I hope it will be widely read throughout the country.

There will be differences of opinion not only among real estate interests and private building interests, but among public housing people. Basically, we know: one – that slums exist in rural and urban areas throughout the nation; two – that we have an expanding population, many of whom must have decent but inexpensive housing; three – that this can only be done for our lowest income groups by cutting all the normal costs which are included necessarily in private operations.

This war, like the last, has increased bad housing in spite of emergency defense building. There will be a demand for housing at the end of the war, and the field will be open for both public and private building. Public building can spur private industry to do a better job, and I do not think it needs to hamper in any way the development of legitimate real estate operations and legitimate private construction. Housing is of vital interest because bad housing is responsible for so many of our other social problems.

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January 26, 1944

New York – (Tuesday)
Because of an unexpected visitor, I did not go to the country as I had expected to do on Saturday night after the Democratic National Committee dinner. So, Sunday was a quiet day in Washington, if you can call any household quiet where two small boys of three and a half and four and a half, charge down the central hall with a tablecloth over their heads, always playing they are some kind of war machine!

Mrs. Norman Mack of Buffalo, New York, who was staying with us, accepted the grandchildren with very good grace, considering the fact that one of them even visited her in her bedroom. She was a wonderful guest to have in the house, because she seemed to enjoy the family with its great variety of ages from one year to sixty odd, and she told us so many stories at lunch and at dinner, that the older children were fascinated.

On Sunday evening, The Voice of the Turtle, which has been a tremendous success in New York City, was giving what is called a command performance for the benefit of the infantile paralysis campaign in Washington. I had not expected to go, but since my plans were changed, we went. Commissioner Russell Young, who is in charge of the money-raising activities in the District of Columbia, told me that they cleared a good many thousand dollars. There are only three actors in the cast so they are constantly on the stage. It was very gracious of them to come down for just one night.

It is always remarkable to me how generous artists are with their time, their talents and their money, and this small cast gave an extremely good performance.

Early yesterday morning we came to New York City, and in the afternoon I was most interested to meet Miss Laura Margolis, who was working for refugees in Shanghai when the war broke out and was later interned there. She only returned to this country when the last exchange of prisoners was made. I shall never cease to marvel at the courage of people like Miss Margolis who, after having escaped from one dangerous situation, seem anxious to return to another. She wishes to go wherever she can continue to work to help alleviate the suffering with which she became so familiar among the refugees in Shanghai.

Later, Madame Ouspenskaya was brought to tea with me by Mr. Norman Cousins. What a vivacious and courageous person she is! She told me that her life had been filled with adventure. During the last war she was an actress in Russia and served a number of hours a day in a hospital as a sister of mercy. She nursed her own family through typhus, passed through a cholera district on one occasion, lived through the revolution and the famine, and she says that nothing holds any terrors for her now. Madame Ouspenskaya would like to go out to the remote places and entertain the men in the Army, but that, of course, will have to be passed on by the USO camp shows.

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January 27, 1944

Detroit, Michigan – (Wednesday)
Today I want to tell you a story and reprint a poem.

The girl to whom the poem was written became engaged on November 13, 1942, to young Lt. S. J. Wright. He had majored in English at Dartmouth where his father is a professor of philosophy, and he wanted to make writing his career. Instead, the day after graduation in May 1942, he went into the Marine Corps, and, after training in Quantico, was on his way to the South Pacific. Early this past fall the poem arrived enclosed in a letter to his girl. This poem represents the one fulfillment of his life’s ambition. He was killed November 13, 1943, in action while attempting to knock out an enemy position so his men could advance.

To explain the last line of the poem, he wrote in his letter:

This is for you, as you can plainly see, and so I want you to like it and understand it. That won’t be difficult (the understanding) – until perhaps the last word which you may neither like nor understand. Selfishness in itself is not necessarily bad – it is too human for that. You would quickly say that our greatest want (or selfishness) is to be together again. Yet if you think, you’ll realize even that selfishness is subordinate to the reason for fighting this war. But we feel, and here we constantly do, that some great good must come from this. Which is why I am here and you’re there. Maybe you like it better this way; although our selfishness (yours and mine) is undeniably uppermost in our hearts, we make an effort to keep it secondary in our minds. Do you see that compared to the fight it is selfishness?

The poem, which I reprint by permission of The Ladies’ Home Journal:

“A Marine to His Girl”

From the damp of my foxhole, each night,
Up through the restless, worrying jungle
Into the heaven’s shimmering light,
I lean my weight to the emptiness,

And reach strong over the ocean’s arc,
Groping with care to where you are,
Into your windows where the dark
Cold wind swirls and cries your loneliness.

Tenderly, tenderly I hold your love,
Achingly kiss your sweet soft lips,
But briefly, I am torn apart and above
And back to this island’s positiveness.

These nights, as through that window
You pray for the moment when something
More than my spirit returns, deeply know:
Tomorrow must be greater than our selfishness.

A challenge to us that last line!

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January 28, 1944

Louisville, Kentucky – (Thursday)
On Tuesday noon I left New York City for Utica, New York. There I visited one of our military hospitals and spent some time talking to a number of boys, veterans of this war. They had written to ask me if I would come to a meeting for them and I was very glad to have the opportunity to talk to them and hear what was happening to them since their return and what their experiences had been since their discharge from the hospital. Some time I may tell you more about their impressions, but today I must hurriedly give an account of the various things which I have done in the past days.

At 11:30 Tuesday night I left Utica for Detroit, Michigan, arriving there early Wednesday morning. I started out at once with my sister-in-law, Mrs. Dorothy Roosevelt, on a day which took us to various war plants, childcare centers, a luncheon and finally a short rest and family dinner during which I saw my nieces before going to an interracial evening meeting. I took the night train to Louisville.

Here I was shown through the school where nurses, who are going to fly on hospital planes, are trained. Their training also includes actual flights with patients in this country before they go to combat zones. They wanted very much to have me with them on one of these flights earlier in the year, but unfortunately, that was not practicable.

Tomorrow I will tell you more of all the different things which I have seen, but on this trip, I have been forcibly reminded of a letter which came to me a few days ago and which some of you may enjoy as I did. A much-harassed woman who has evidently felt in the past that she must more or less follow the styles of the year, wrote me a wail saying that skirts are narrower and not as comfortable, that if only there could be a slogan which said: “Be patriotic, wear your old clothes,” one could wear last year’s dress and get around more easily, if somewhat less stylishly.

She adds like many other worried housewives:

How can people buy bonds, pay taxes, raise children, combat the high cost of living if they must discard their old clothes while they are still good?

I want to remind her that the most expensive dressmakers, both in Paris in the old days and in New York City today, make dresses for the individual, and sometimes they have no relation to what might be called the style as you see it in shop windows, or on pretty little youthful misses tripping down the street. During most of this journey I have worn a dress that is well made, but I think it is nearly three years old. I felt quite comfortable and as much in the fashion as an old lady like myself need ever be!

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January 29, 1944

Washington – (Friday)
After my hurried column yesterday, I want to go back a little and tell you that in Utica, New York, I not only talked to the Second World War veterans who invited me to come there, but they held an open meeting which was attended by a very large group of people in one of the high school auditoriums. They told of the purposes of their organization and they had a list of questions prepared for me which showed how little most of us have thought through the problems of meeting the returning war veterans’ needs now.

We have been so busy getting men in the Army ready to go out to fight the war, that we have almost forgotten that already we have a great number of men coming back who need on the statute books, all the legislation we have talked about but have not yet passed for the benefit of the veterans of the war.

I have not yet given you impressions of my visit to the Cadillac and Packard plants in Detroit. The plants are now employing well over 50 percent women and the problems seem to be exactly what they have always been. How does a woman work in a factory all day, get her washing and cleaning done, cook the meals and give any care to her children? The care of the children is the only one of these problems that seems to have been tackled by the community and that is not adequately met.

In the child care center which I visited, where daycare is given, there is also an experimental boarding school where children, aged two to five, are accepted for six days a week. The mothers take them home only for their free day.

I think this arrangement proved very successful in Great Britain and it seems to be popular in Detroit, as they have many more applications than they are able to take under the present setup. The problem of shopping is solved; the laundry problem is not solved. The problem of hot noon meals for children in schools is partially solved by canteens which have been setup in certain areas, but these are not completely satisfactory as yet, and the problem of hot meals for workers in the factory is still completely neglected. Only in a few cases are meals being cooked for women to take home in their own containers. Some restaurants are not giving this service.

So we see that there is still much work to be done by communities if the home is not to suffer by the full-time employment of women in factory work to the extent that is now necessary.

I want to tell you about the Air Force hospital at Bowman Field, Kentucky. The work done for the rehabilitation of its patients while they are in the hospital is thrilling, but that and more about the training of our “flying nurses” will have to wait until tomorrow.

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January 31, 1944

Washington – (Sunday)
Not long ago, one of the magazines carried an article which told of the way the Air Force was trying to turn the period which its patients had to spend in hospitals from a bleak period of wasted days into one of opportunity for increased education.

At Bowman Field, Kentucky, near Louisville, I saw the program functioning. From the ceiling of the hospital hang little model planes where each boy, lying on his back, can plainly see them. All the way up and down the ward these little planes dangle – German, Italian, British, Russian and American models. They are rotated from day to day.

A radio man can practice his work right from his bed. When patients are able to walk around, classes are held, both for increasing their knowledge in their specific lines of work and for taking up new subjects. No boy is allowed to grow soft physically while he is in bed. Every part of his body which is not incapacitated is exercised, and when he gets around, he goes into the gymnasium where nothing is lacking for rehabilitation work, even though much of the equipment is made on the post.

The Red Cross does bedside and shop work in handcrafts and the boys have made many bracelets and small gifts for the people at home. The library is used and has current magazines and books on hand. It was quite evident that time did not hang heavy on the hands of any boy who was well enough to have his mind diverted.

The “Flying Nurses” school is at Bowman Field. The students have classes to familiarize them with the proper behavior of a plane. They hike as much as ten miles, and during part of the time they are under fire. Live ammunition is fired over them during part of their training so that they get accustomed to the noise and the sound of shells. They must learn to swim and to jump into the water with their full equipment, which is quite a trick to do properly. They practice loading and unloading a plane with patients, and finally get experience in the air before they take actual patients on flights within the United States.

Over 400 nurses have already been trained and are on duty all over the world. Only one nurse has been lost, but many of them have had exciting experiences and been decorated for bravery. One girl, who was in a crash landing, got all her patients out when the pilot and co-pilot were injured. When they were found several days later, she was taking care of everyone on the beach of a tropical island, even though she was slightly injured herself.

These nurses and many others who serve in our military hospitals will have the right to wear ribbons which denote service in many areas of the war. Their saga will be written in the future and all of us will be proud of their achievements.

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February 1, 1944

Washington – (Monday)
On Saturday I had a most interesting talk with Mrs. Hugo Cedergren. Mr. and Mrs. Cedergren are over here for the YMCA and YWCA, visiting prisoners’ camps and internee camps. She has been allowed to visit camps in Germany, to go to Geneva, and she has probably seen more of enemy territory than most neutrals. She told me that with the aid of the Red Cross packages from this country, Canada and Great Britain, the women and children in enemy camps were managing to get along fairly well as far as food and clothing go. Barracks life, however, is harder on women than on men, but the effect on the children has not yet been seriously harmful from the nutritional standpoint.

The president of the Navy Wives, an organization composed of the wives of the enlisted men of the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, came to lunch with me to tell me of the organization. The group is growing, and I am sure it will accomplish great things as time goes on.

In the afternoon, I visited the American Mariner, a liberty ship which has been here to aid in the Fourth War Loan Drive. This is a training ship and some 200 men are on board. We went over it and saw various shops and classrooms on board, where a man is taught the tools of his trade. The galley, of course, is far larger than on an ordinary ship because so many meals have to be served. While the ship is here, the men are nobly doing their share for the bond drive. They act as hosts to more than 6,000 visitors a day, help children up and down ladders and reunite people who get detached from their particular parties.

The quota set for the ship has been exceeded. I think it is safe to say that many people who visited it will have a better understanding of the amount of cargo that these ships can carry and the job which is done by the Merchant Marine. Four men were given their combat ribbons while we looked on.

Saturday I did the rounds of the birthday balls, which were more numerous this year than ever before. I ended up at the Hotel Statler, and met many of the movie stars there. We listened to the President’s broadcast. Then I cut the birthday cake and gave a piece to every star present. The only other place where I cut a birthday cake was at the Stage Door Canteen, which was so full of servicemen that I think they crowded out most of their hostesses. I only saw a few girls on the outskirts!

On Sunday we had lunch at the White House for all the movie stars and as usual, showed them around. I am always impressed by the historical sense which actors and actresses seem to have so much more strongly than people who do not project themselves into other people’s lives as an everyday occurrence. My last activity in connection with the campaign for infantile paralysis was to attend the United Nations Benefit on Sunday evening, at which 40 nations were represented.

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February 2, 1944

Washington – (Tuesday)
On Sunday night we saw the short infantile paralysis film done by Miss Greer Garson, and I think it was one of the most striking pictures I have ever seen. So, few people realize how slowly improvement comes to victims of infantile paralysis, and yet how much can be done if you have the courage and the patience to put through consistent treatment.

After that, we saw a very interesting British film on the life of William Penn. Historically, this gives a very good picture of William Penn as a man, the background of the Quakers, and the founding of our own state of Pennsylvania. I should think it would be of value in our schools and of great interest to the public.

At lunch yesterday I had the pleasure of entertaining a number of ladies whose husbands serve on the Supreme Court, in Congress, or in the military services.

In the evening, Mrs. Frederick Stuart Green, who is here from her home in Virginia for a two-day visit, went with me to see a performance of J. B. Priestley’s Laburnum Grove, which was given by Post 147 (USA) Canadian Legion of the British Empire Service League. I think the men were all in the Canadian service, and professional actors. The women were amateurs, but members of the auxiliary. The whole performance was excellent and we all enjoyed it very much.

We are now in the midst of a campaign for the collection and conservation of waste paper. As every household can do something for the drive, I feel it should be constantly in our minds. The War Production Board has stated that we will need 8,000,000 tons of waste paper in 1944. Mr. Edwin S. Friendly has stated:

The American people must contribute 35% more waste paper this year than they did last year if the requirements of our military forces and our essential civilian demands are to be met.

No paper should be burned. We should follow the directions given and have every bit ready for regular collections. Mrs. Hugo Cedergren told me that in prison camps in Germany, materials are so short that the children have to use the wrappings from the Red Cross food parcels as their only construction materials for toys or games they make for themselves.

Among other things, the girls made a complete doll house from the cardboard, wrapping paper and string which came around the parcels. I imagine it has taken a long time for people to reach the point of constant thought about salvage which this represents. Nevertheless, we must and can think a great deal more about it than we have in the past, because lack of manpower makes the shortage of pulp wood greater than ever before and we must rely on salvage paper to take its place. Fifteen hundred pounds of waste paper corresponds to one cord of wood.

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February 3, 1944

Washington – (Wednesday)
Yesterday morning I went to the Corcoran Art Gallery to see a special exhibition of paintings and drawings by official U.S. Navy combat artists under the auspices of the Navy.

These pictures cover the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic, and the North and South Pacific from the Aleutians to New Guinea.

LtCdr. Griffith Baily Coale, USNR, had some very interesting pictures all done in a rather gray monotone, creating the effect of cold, which fitted the subject well. Even when he moved into the more sunny areas of the Pacific, the colors seemed subdued, but the life and action made them vivid.

Lt. William F. Draper, USNR, had an interesting portrait of Adm. Halsey and some Alaska pictures which interested me very much. The best portraits, I think, were done by Lt. Albert K. Murray, USNR, although Lt. Dwight C. Shepler, USNR, had a portrait of Gen. A. A. Vandegrift, USMC, which was an excellent likeness, and his Action on the River, done on Guadalcanal, shows the fighting terrain in a very effective manner.

There was one painting which will linger in my mind for a long time. It was a painting by Lt. (jg.) Mitchell Jamieson, USNR, of a group of men just ready to land in an LST boat. The edges of their helmets gave practically the only light in the picture, and the one face visible had the grim and determined look which the backs of the other men seemed to express.

Lt. Jamieson is a District of Columbia painter whose work we have all known for some time. I think he has gained strength as a painter during his experience at sea.

I also stopped in at the office of the Assistant Secretary of the Interior to see a portrait of Dr. Carver by Miss Betsy Reyneau. It was done only a month before Dr. Carver’s death and it is a delightful portrait. She has also painted one of Mrs. Mary Bethune, which is extremely good.

Yesterday we had the second tea for the remaining members of the White House office staff. Some of them had never had an opportunity to go through certain rooms in the White House before, as the large entertainments to which they were formerly invited are no longer given.

In the evening I attended the concert given by the Philadelphia Orchestra in Constitution Hall. The first part of the concert was not such familiar music to me, but Monsieur Zino Francescatti, the violin soloist, played magnificently. This orchestra, under Mr. Eugene Ormandy’s conducting, is stirring to hear. I was very much interested in Mr. Robert Russell Bennett’s symphony of The Four Freedoms, and enjoyed Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé just as I always do.

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February 4, 1944

Washington – (Thursday)
Yesterday afternoon I had a talk with Mrs. William Walrath of “The Cradle Society” in Evanston, Illinois. Many people have obtained babies for adoption through this society, and Mrs. Walrath has done a great deal to improve our knowledge of the scientific care of children, particularly where freedom from infection is concerned. She is now very much interested in a new type of maternity hospital which will protect both mother and baby from infection during the first ten days after birth. She showed me the plans yesterday. It seems probable that hospitals of this kind would eliminate the dangers which threaten many babies placed in the usual hospital nursery, as well as hazards to the mother from infection brought in from the outside.

The wives of the Cabinet officers, Miss Perkins, and I were hosts at tea to the wives of the members of the House of Representatives yesterday. In the evening we had a strictly family party as some of the grandchildren are leaving today, and we all felt that they should have our main attention on their last evening.

This morning I am speaking on my trip to the Southwest Pacific at a meeting of the St. Thomas Parish Guild. Then I will take a train for Princeton, New Jersey, where I am to spend the evening and speak for The Round Table, a Princeton undergraduate organization. I will continue on to New York City, arriving there rather late tonight.

The Atlantic Monthly is offering a thousand-dollar prize for the best article on “Freedom of the Press in the United States.” The notice reads:

The competition is open to newspaper readers, who are the ultimate critics of the press and to all journalists of all ages and experience – editorial writers, sports writers, rewrite men and reporters.

They suggest that articles should not be less than 4,500 words or more than 7,000, and they must be received at the Atlantic Monthly’s office not later than May 3, 1944. The judges are Edward Weeks, editor of The Atlantic Monthly; Gerald W. Johnson, historian, biographer and former editorial writer of the Baltimore Sun; Louis M. Lyons, curator, the Nieman Foundation, Harvard University, staff reporter of the Boston Globe.

This contest seems to me of great importance, for many of us have never really formulated what we mean by freedom of the press. Freedom may be used as a name to cover up a very real control, and I have thought for a long time that the clarification of what constitutes freedom of the press would be valuable, just as I think the clarification of what constitutes academic freedom in our schools and colleges would be a help to better understanding of education.

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February 5, 1944

New York – (Friday)
Just as I left for the train yesterday, the news came of Raymond Clapper’s death. It is a curious thing to feel any sense of personal loss when you have hardly known a person. I had met Raymond Clapper only a few times, and have occasionally differed with his attitude on public questions, but I have read so much that he wrote I feel as though I knew him well. In my mind I have a picture of an individual – intelligent, honest, adventurous, devoted to his job and with high standards of integrity and of workmanship. I always read what he wrote feeling that I was getting not only a picture of what he had seen, but an honest opinion of what he, as a person, felt. I respected and admired him.

To his wife and children this must be a terrible blow. Even though every one of us, when we say goodbye to our men going on dangerous missions, tell ourselves that this is possibly the last time we will see them, and we think we are prepared to meet whatever comes, still there is in all human hearts a belief that the worst will not happen to us. The blow, when it falls, is always a shock, always unexpected, never mitigated by what may have happened before, or what we know is happening to other people.

For Mr. Clapper it is probably the way he would have wanted to go, the way all of us would want to go – serving as best we know how – and he would know that he left his children the most important thing they could possibly have – a name to be proud of, and an example in his work which they will find it hard to emulate.

I had come from Washington yesterday for the Round Table meeting at Princeton University. The vast majority of students are now in the Army and Navy groups, but there are still a few civilians left. They are very young and will soon be in the armed forces or in some branch of study which is considered important to the carrying on of the war, such as medicine or engineering.

The Round Table as an institution must be of value to these young people because it gives them an opportunity to talk with many people of various points of view. On the threshold of life, this is a valuable experience. They put a difficult question to me and I wonder how my readers would answer it. “How can the quality of our citizenship be improved and how can our active participation in government be stimulated?” If anyone could give a good answer to that question, one of the great problems of democracy would be solved.

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February 7, 1944

New York – (Sunday)
Yesterday was an exciting day. I have seen coast defenses from Seattle, Washington, to San Diego, California, but I never happen to have seen what is done to protect the Atlantic coastline.

At Gen. Jarman’s headquarters a group of us saw the whole plan. We were told how he had started his organization, developing it till it reached a peak, and now was gradually seeing the system being used in other places.

With every new victory abroad the probability of an attack on our coast is lessened. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see what has been accomplished right around New York.

I went into the newspaper office which keeps many of these coast defense men who are in remote places informed on what is happening in the world once a week. I found that a board of newspaper publishers had given them an award as the best Army newspaper. One of their features is an amusing comic strip, in which the main character does everything in the wrong way, and he serves to teach the readers how to behave in the right way. They had some excellent covers, ranging from a most attractive baby to a picture of my husband which I do not think is one of his best.

After leaving the headquarters where we got the general picture, we visited several of the installations – from searchlights to anti-aircraft batteries. There was a time when captive balloons were used as part of the defense. That time is past, but I had seen those on the west coast and know how they were operated.

A half hour at home, and I went off with the Navy to see the Merchant Marine gun crews in their headquarters in Brooklyn. I was glad to meet the whole crew of a battleship, four of whom had come to see me in Washington. Many of them wear pre-Pearl Harbor ribbons as well as other insignia denoting service in different theatres of the war. These boys on merchant ships probably see a greater variety of places than the boys in the regular Navy who are usually assigned to one area and stay there for a considerable time.

At one time this branch of the service had the greatest number of casualties, but now both the enemy undersea craft and the enemy planes seem to be pretty well under control and in an ever widening area. I pinned on medals and handed out commendations to some of the men at a very formal ceremony, and was particularly glad to have this opportunity of seeing so many of them who are in port waiting for their next assignment.

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February 8, 1944

New York – (Monday)
Saturday night we went to see Katharine Cornell and Raymond Massey in a play called Lovers and Friends by Dodie Smith.

The reviews have been none too good on this play and so I wonder whether the fact that I liked it so much was because the people seemed to me real people and behaved somewhat the way they would have behaved when I was a young woman!

I confess I thought the husband lacked a little subtlety in announcing his love affair, but the rest of the play was full of subtle meaning to me. While perhaps one should not expect evenings of entertainment to teach one any lessons, there is one in this play which men and women would do well to learn.

It is obviously true that the first flush of being “in love” always changes into something deeper and calmer, or more superficial. I have known only a few very happy marriages. By that I do not mean just people who get along together and live contentedly through life, but people who are really excitingly happy. These people are those who have somehow preserved the ability to recapture the romance of the early days and rejuvenate their love so that neither the man nor the woman need wander off to find the romance they long for somewhere else.

The play shows that it is not the people who happen to attract each other temporarily who really matter. It is the lure of romance – finding someone new to tell about yourself, someone who will give you a feeling that what you say is important and that they have never heard it before, someone who will give you the feeling that you are more important and alluring than a previous engagement, or a book, or people, or perhaps even a career. This may be a lesson worth learning or perhaps you think I’m wrong. In any case, Katharine Cornell and Raymond Massey give you a pleasant evening and some very fine acting.

Incidentally, I noticed one thing in going around with the Army and Navy last Saturday. This war is giving an opportunity for men who might never have met during the course of their whole existence to know each other and to know each other very well. Jimmy O’Hara from Massachusetts and Johnny Jones from South Carolina will know a great deal more about how and why certain things happen in their respective states. Gen. Jarman, who has a great interest in human beings, can almost invariably pick out the state from which a man comes and his occupation by looking at him. He made only one mistake in a whole morning!

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February 9, 1944

Washington – (Tuesday)
Standing waiting in the station yesterday afternoon, I saw something which typifies what must be happening to thousands of young women and girls in this country. A young woman with a child in her arms kissed a serviceman goodbye. She watched him go down the steps with a smile on her face, and kept the baby waving, and then she turned away and the tears sparkled in her eyes.

I remembered something I had heard a young woman say not long before:

We’ve never been separated since we were married. What will I do by myself? How do I decide about the children? I want to do something to help the country and to feel that I am helping him too, but I just don’t feel I can take it and make the decisions alone.

Of course she can take it and does take it. And thousands of young women all over the country are making decisions, are going to work, are taking care of their children, and even the children are learning to take it. They look for their fathers, some of whom have never left them before. The world seems a strange one without “Daddy” to come in in the evening, to listen to what they have been doing, to help them mend a toy, and to carry them upstairs to bed.

As I look at a crowd today in a railroad station, or on a train, or even in the streets, I wonder if we realize what a weight is put on every heart by the accumulation of anxiety and sorrow which walks with so many individuals, day in and day out. A woman passing by will stop and say:

Are you Mrs. Roosevelt? I just wanted to speak to you. I’ve got a boy somewhere in the Pacific and I’ve got a girl in the WACs going overseas pretty soon.

The lips that smile hardly hide the tremble and you know that a mother’s heart is sorely troubled.

We are a fortunate nation, nevertheless. War is not on our doorsteps. We are not living under enemy rule. We haven’t had to see our boys taken off in labor drafts, our girls taken out of our villages and cities to even worse fates. If that happened to us, we would understand the looks that we find on the faces of some refugees from Poland, or Czechoslovakia, or Holland or Norway. Oh, the world is a sad place to live in these days, and God grant we learn our lesson. It is not enough to hate war. We must have power to build for peace and we must be willing to make the sacrifices which that entails.

Doris Fleeson came to talk at my press conference this morning. Straight from Italy, she told us stories of our men and of the nurses which make me proud of the United States and of its young people. Others who were at the press conference will tell you what she said. I only want to add that I was proud of her and of her work.

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February 10, 1944

Washington – (Wednesday)
Last night I was talking to an older man in the Army Air Force who has just come back from India, China and Italy. It gives one courage to see people of one’s own generation still able to render real service because of their training and the good physical condition which they still enjoy. This man is a vital, energetic person and I think he would have found staying out of the storm and stress of this period quite impossible. He makes his stories very vivid and full of understanding because he has a long and varied experience behind him.

He gave me permission to tell one particular story. When our Army went into Naples, the Italians were happy to see them. As our boys marched in, a motherly Italian woman rushed up to her attic where for a whole month, she had hidden an American soldier. She had fed him what little she had and she gave him loving care. He had escaped from a German prison camp. He had obtained an Italian uniform and made friends with an Italian soldier, and together they travelled toward the part of Italy where he knew his Army was fighting.

They reached Naples but it was still infested with Germans, and the decided that they had better part and that he must find a hiding place. Our boy met this woman’s son, who took him home. She hid him. From day to day, they expected the Americans to come in. They heard the steps of the German police patrol which passed the house night and day. The woman had four children, and their lives and hers were forfeit if the Germans ever found out that she harbored an American.

After the American Army got in, our boy and my friend gathered what rations they could find and went back to her laden with more food than she had seen for many days in gratitude for the hospitality. The whole family and the two American soldiers had a feast. The woman periodically threw her arms around the American boy and shed a few tears, tears of thanksgiving because he was safe. For she had come to look upon him almost as one of her own children!

I imagine that the Italians are an incorrigibly gay and peace-loving people. Mussolini has not made a permanent dent upon them. I hope they have the ability to demand and to carry through the type of government which will give them the things that make life worth living.

Doris Fleeson said yesterday that as our boys sank deep in Italian mud and endured rain day after day, they remarked: “Sunny Italy, what?” Italy certainly hasn’t been all sun, politically or economically. Will the future bring her people and all the people of the world compensation in the way of justice and hope for what this generation of youth has gone through?

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February 11, 1944

Washington – (Thursday)
Tomorrow the birthday of Thomas A. Edison will be celebrated. At six fifteen in the evening there will be a broadcast in his honor in which four great educators will participate. They are Dr. Charles Seymour, president of Yale University; the Rev. Joseph M. Egan, SJ, president of Loyola University; Dr. Rufus B. von KleinSmid, president of the University of Southern California; and Governor Spessard L. Holland of Florida.

By his many inventions, Thomas Edison has probably changed our world more than any man of his time. We are apt to forget who is responsible for the various things in our environment which we come to accept as a matter of course, but which we would never enjoy if someone had not started the ball rolling by an invention which led to commercial production.

For instance, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the advent of moving pictures. Mr. Edison contributed greatly to the development of this industry, and we only now begin to see what possibilities lie ahead not only for entertainment, but for mass education and the spreading of knowledge through the use of motion pictures.

It is well to remember and to honor our great men, and at the same time we should remember that they often had difficulty in getting a start. We should keep an eye out for the young people of today, who may have just as great contributions to make to the future if they get a helping hand from some of their elders.

While we are talking about the radio, I might add that I hope everybody listens to Mr. Archibald MacLeish’s broadcast from seven to seven-thirty on Saturday evenings. He is author of the script and one of the speakers on the broadcast. The program “seeks to portray the common heritage of all the Americas.”

I have been getting inquiries as to how many packages may be sent to prisoners of war. The Red Cross sends a food package which costs $3.75, and these packages are assembled and packed by Red Cross volunteers, financed by the Army and Navy and sent weekly to each captured American. The British Red Cross also furnishes one package a week to British prisoners of war.

Next of kin of prisoners are permitted to send an 11 pound package, 18 inches in length and 42 inches combined length and girth every 60 days, and they receive a label for such packages from the Provost Marshal’s office. With the label goes a list of items permitted, also a special label for sending cigarettes through a manufacturer. In Buffalo, New York, the American Parcels for Prisoners of War Association, whose chairman is Mrs. Stewart C. Welch, sends practically the same food parcels with the addition of vitamin tablets, in case you want to supplement the food parcels sent by the Red Cross.

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February 12, 1944

Washington – (Friday)
I had a visit from a Red Cross worker back from one of our fronts yesterday afternoon. I was impressed by her feeling that we, at home, were not giving the proper respect to the overseas boys when they return, permanently or on furlough. I imagine that any boy coming back to his home is made much of and listened to. But in many places, particularly ports of debarkation, we are so crowded and so busy that we do not give as much thought as we should to what it would mean to these boys if every one of us gave them the respect and attention due them.

How many of us know our overseas ribbons, and can tell by looking at them where our boys have served? That would be a good thing to know. If we never missed a chance to make a man feel at home in our city or town even though it was far from his home, it would help. We could make quite a change in the first few days which he spends back in the United States and which he has looked forward to for weary months, if we were always ready to render him any service in our power.

I want to give you excerpts from two letters which have just come to me and which will show what people from home mean to men who are overseas, and how rewarding it is to feel that one has given even a short period of pleasure to these men. The first is from a young Red Cross worker whom I have known for a long time.

I wish you could have seen our men this afternoon – the lounge was packed – and you could have heard a pin drop. They do so appreciate anything that is good. If only more of our top artists would come over from America. I don’t think they can possibly realize what it means to the men so far away from home. If they did, they would be proud to serve and eager to come.

The next is from an artist, a well-known British musician:

Having just given a concert here to the American soldiers (one of several I have been giving them in different clubs) I felt that you and the President might like to know about it, and how happy I have been to give them an hour of music to stimulate and soothe them so far away from home.

Of course our artists are anxious to go, and many of them do go, but there is the question of transportation which is always difficult.

Our servicemen want attention when they are far away from home. How much more they must want it the day they get home and the days thereafter if they happen to be held in a strange place by hospitalization! It seems to me that a serviceman from overseas should go to the head of any line, be the first served in a restaurant, get the best seat everywhere. He is giving so much for his home and we can give him so little in return.

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Interestingly, I felt the same way upon returning from submarine patrols in the late 1970s. I would go to a mall and people walked past me without knowing I was gone for months. I wanted to scream that I was now home. But no one seemed to care I was helping to protect them.

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February 14, 1944

Washington – (Sunday)
A letter came to me the other day, a part of which I want to give you. It expresses the feeling so many of us have in our hearts better than I could.

It seems to have been necessary for both of my sons to give their lives in this war. I am willing, and able, to take it, if their deaths and those thousands of others who are dying far away from home, can be justified by a better and more equalized world when this war is over. If we get anything like the “status quo” or “back to normalcy,” it can be nothing but a hideous waste.

Each one of us carries a responsibility toward the boys who have died and the boys who have lived and gone through these tragic years, because, as this friend of mine says, unless we have “a better and more equalized world,” we will just be preparing for another generation to go through the same thing.

As I sit and go over the mail night after night, I notice more and more how many women feel that their heartbreak is only justified if those whom they love need never again go through the horror and waste of war. We cannot know whether we will always be able to have a peaceful world in the future, but we can lay the best foundations that our intelligence and unselfish thinking can possibly achieve. Then we may hope that the training which our young people receive, and the environment in which they live, will make it possible for them to keep on building a world of peace.

Yesterday morning and afternoon I spent several hours at a conference called under the auspices of The Young Women’s Christian Association, The National Council of Catholic Women, The National Council of Jewish Women, The National Council of Negro Women, The National Council of Women of the United States and The National Women’s Trade Union League of America. It was a national planning conference “on building better race relationships.” The representatives there were trying to find ways and means which they could take back to their organizations for consideration. And techniques which might be used in different parts of the United States to prepare us to live in a world of neighbors made up of many different races were also to be studied.

I do not know how many of my readers see The Red Cross Courier. But don’t fail to read a short story by Annette Robin, called We Meet the Missions, in the February issue. It will give you a vivid picture of the life of our fliers in faraway New Guinea, and of what the Red Cross girls are accomplishing there. You won’t read it with dry eyes, but if you are a woman, you will carry your head a little more proudly because of what other women are doing to help our gallant youngsters.

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February 15, 1944

Washington – (Monday)
To my readers who live in New York City, and incidentally to those who live in other cities where a like situation may exist, I should like to suggest that anyone who has a spare room in his house keep in touch with The Officers’ Service Committee. In New York City, the office is in the Hotel Commodore, and there is a housing desk run by the committee, where rooms and apartments are procured for officers and their families. It is difficult for a woman to arrive in a big city, expecting to meet her husband, sometimes with a child or two, only to find that he has not yet arrived or that he has already sailed away.

Big cities are crowded these days. People with limited incomes cannot always afford hotel prices and I know that this particular service has been of great help to many men and to their families.

Of course, there are many other things that are done for the officers. They can procure lists of places of entertainment and theater tickets at half price. They can get information on many subjects and I am sure arrangements can be made for any particular thing they wish to do.

This housing service, however, has especially appealed to me. In New York City it is headed by Mrs. Herbert Carlebach, and I hear that her difficulties are very great at the present time. So, if you have a spare room at any time, let her know, or put yourself on her list so she can call you and find out if you have any free space when she is looking for accommodations.

This is Negro History Week, from February 13 to February 20 inclusive. In Chicago, Negro history is being taught in the schools. It seems to me that this might well be done in some of our other big cities to give some background of knowledge about our largest minority group in this country.

On Saturday I went with the President to pay homage at the Lincoln Memorial, and we were reminded that this is the 11th year that the President has attended the ceremonies. The most colorful part is the sight of the waving flags coming down the steps, with the great statue of Lincoln sitting so calmly on its pedestal, looking down on the men who revere his memory, but who have not yet achieved the greatness for their country which was Lincoln’s ideal.

In the afternoon I went to the Navy Yard with my husband. He spoke over the radio at the ceremonies attending the turning over of an American destroyer escort to the French. The ship’s officers and men presented me with a lovely bouquet of red roses. Mrs. John Roosevelt and I went on board for a glance at the quarters.