Read The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt Online
Authors: Eleanor Roosevelt
I have been talking from the point of view of a Democrat, because I am more familiar with their tactics. But it would appear that the same tactics are used in both parties. In both cases, one had the feeling that the convention did not greatly matter. The votes had been sewed up beforehand.
There is time ahead to re-examine our machinery on state and city as well as national level, to find a method to ensure that each of us can make his voice heard as independent and responsible voters. We can do it if we want to.
As Adlai Stevenson said to some of his family and friends in his living room in Los Angeles, during the hush that followed the realization of his defeat at the Democratic convention, “Cheer up. All is not lost.”
Looking back on that turbulent—but prearranged—convention, I am heartened by the memory of the warm spontaneous outburst of genuine feeling and tribute and love that greeted Mr. Stevenson when he entered the hall to take his seat. Even though the delegates had been committed in advance, there was no stifling this tribute to a great statesman and a magnificent citizen.
For him, modest as he is, lacking in vanity, so incapable of self-aggrandizement that he refused to lift his hand to seek the nomination, it must have been a heart-lifting moment.
One factor of the convention that I had cause to remember afterwards was that no one knows when a television camera is turned his way, as the cameras are constantly swinging around. Unless you are constantly aware that you are under scrutiny you are apt to be caught at unexpected and embarrassing moments.
Later I received many letters from people who said they sympathized with my tears after Adlai’s defeat. As a matter of fact, it was not tears I was having wiped off my cheek but someone’s lipstick.
Because the plain-clothes men were afraid that when I went up to second Adlai’s nomination I would be caught in a mob, they circled me about. They were very nice and very solicitous and treated me as though I were made of Dresden china. In fact, they practically carried me, with the result that we moved so slowly I thought we would never cover the ground from one side of the arena to another.
The plain-clothes men held my elbows firmly at every step. Now, this happens to be one of the few things which indicate to me that I am supposed to be unable to navigate in the ordinary manner at my age and I resent it very much. Consequently, I kept trying to get away from and shake off their helpful hands. Presumably this showed up on television, because I received a number of letters from people who wrote to assure me that I had behaved in a most rude and disagreeable manner.
I was also criticized for coming in and receiving an ovation while Governor Collins was making his excellent speech, but, because of the noise, I was quite unaware of the fact that anyone was speaking. Sometimes, even now, I am still taken aback to discover how closely one’s most trivial movements are followed in this day of television. It seems as though one can find privacy only within the silence of one’s own mind.
“
YOU REALLY
must slow down.” This is becoming the repeated refrain of my children and all of my friends. But how can I when the world is so challenging in its problems and so terribly interesting? I think I must have a good deal of my uncle Theodore Roosevelt in me because I enjoy a good fight and I could not, at any age, really be contented to take my place in a warm corner by the fireside and simply look on.
Early in July of 1960 I went to Washington for briefings at the State Department in preparation for the meeting in Warsaw, Poland, of the World Federation of United Nations Associations.
Of course, our American Association for the United Nations is not controlled by our government, but we always ask to be told of any situation that may exist in a country to which we are to send delegates. Such background information helps us to be better-equipped citizens and better able to carry on discussions with the other United Nations associations that may be present.
This trip, which I made in September, was my first to Poland and I was able to visit two cities, Warsaw, where the meeting was held, and Cracow. No cities could have been more dissimilar. Warsaw was probably one of the most completely destroyed cities in World War II. What the Germans failed to destroy by shelling they systematically burned. Almost nothing was left standing. The people were driven out into the woods and the city was demolished, stone by stone.
When the Russians finally liberated the area, there was some discussion about rebuilding. After all, there was nothing to start from. Perhaps it would be better to pick another location and begin from scratch, but at length it was decided to rebuild on the same site.
Because the mayor felt that the people should have roots, an attempt was made, as far as possible, to build a replica of the old city. An ancient square was reproduced almost exactly. They rebuilt the old church and put back the statues. Old stones were salvaged from the rubble to be used again. On the whole, it has been very well done, for while it is a modern city, the atmosphere of the old city has been re-created successfully. True, there is one horrible building, designed by a Russian architect, almost an exact copy of the hideous University of Moscow, though not quite so large.
Cracow, on the other hand, was left untouched by the war and has retained all its Old World charm, its typically Polish features, oddly but delightfully interspersed with traces of the influences brought there by Italian alliances. In contrast, near Cracow there is one of the new steel cities, on much the same pattern as the steel cities of Russia, signifying the opening up of a balanced economy, partly industrial, partly rural, and therefore a big step forward, as it brings the people of Poland the hope of greater prosperity.
Such hope is grasped eagerly, for it is evident on many sides that Poland is still a very poor country, and the cost of all this rebuilding has been a tremendous drain on the economy.
There are the inevitable shortages of goods. One Polish housewife told me that, while there are few things for which they have to queue up, still meat is always hard to find and is unprocurable on Mondays. Prices are high, on the whole, and I think it is safe to say in general that goods are of poor quality.
The biggest expense, in Poland as in Russia, is for shoes. Clothes are expensive and the material is so poor that wardrobes have constantly to be replaced. A young American woman, married to a Pole, said that her Polish friends simply could not believe her when she told them the suit she wore was six years old. Material like that was unobtainable in Poland at any price.
Nonetheless, one is conscious of the fact that the Polish people live with vitality and enthusiasm. Certainly, I could not have met with more hospitality and solicitude. One cannot help liking the Poles, whether ministers of state or casual workers whom one has an opportunity to meet and chat with.
It seemed to me, indeed, that Poland might well serve as a much-needed bridge of understanding between the Western and Eastern nations if—and that is the stumbling block—if it succeeds in becoming a stable economic country. This, I believe, is possible if its borders are recognized by the Western European community and it is assured of nonaggression from any source. Certainly, such a bridge is going to be essential if we are to build up the beginnings of confidence between East and West. So, perhaps, Poland’s own feeling of greater security—if it can be assured by the two opposing areas—may be the opening wedge to help the others to understanding.
However, it has not yet attained the kind of economic stability, let alone the prosperity, which its people hope for and long for. The people in Warsaw, which seems to epitomize Poland, assured me that the peasants were much better off than the city people because they not only had more to eat but did not have to keep up appearances and buy so many clothes and shoes as were necessary in the cities. But when I had an opportunity to drive out into the country and when I looked at the farms and the farm buildings I felt that the life of the peasant had not yet reached a very high level of comfort.
One thing that greatly interested me was that, while Poland is a Communist state on the Soviet pattern, the Polish people have not accepted as many state controls as the Russian people have. This is particularly true of the women. They are not obliged to take their children to nurseries at a certain age and leave them in the hands of the state. As a result, many of them prefer to stay at home and take care of their own children in their own way.
Another field in which compulsion is not so binding as in the Soviet Union is health care. While the pattern of universal medical care has been laid out in Poland, there is no compulsion to make use of it.
The chief thing one is conscious of in Poland is the fear of a possible change of the new boundaries, which might deprive the country of many of the minerals that make it possible to develop an industrial economy.
Remembering Poland’s position on the map and her past history, it is easy to understand her uneasiness, but the people are going about their business and there is greater prosperity as the years go by. Even though they are a completely communistic dictatorship, there is a greater sense of freedom among the people than you find in the Soviet Union. In the new steel city there are one school, two kindergartens, and two nurseries per district. The architect told me the nurseries were almost empty. The women do not want to send their babies there for fear they will catch some contagious disease. The attitude that every woman must work is not being enforced in Poland.
But if the women have not supinely followed the communistic pattern, they are, from a long and tragic history, alert and uneasy about the course of events. They asked me over and over, “Do you think your government means to give Germany atomic weapons? We are afraid of Germany, of its growth once more in military strength.”
On the whole, that trip to Poland was an interesting and a rewarding one, and it made me see that in these people we could build a bridge of understanding and good will.
In a way, it is, I suppose, ironical that I have visited many Communist-controlled countries without experiencing a single unpleasant incident or encountering one act of hostility or hearing one unfriendly word. Yet here in my own country, earlier in the year, the announcement of a public appearance I was to make in St. Petersburg, Florida, was followed by a telephoned threat that the meeting would be bombed. The threat was, of course, anonymous. Such people are almost invariably cowards.
I assume that the reason for this warning was the fact that I have always been outspoken on my position in regard to the race question, and the man without a name or a face had determined that I should not be heard. Nonetheless, I went. The meeting started and, in spite of the rumors, was very well attended. I was just about to speak when someone stepped to the microphone. The police of St. Petersburg had ordered everyone to leave the building and go some blocks away while a search was made for the bomb.
I assumed, after that, the people would go home, so I was pleased and surprised to find that they had all waited and came back when the building was declared safe. But what touched me most was the gallantry of a little southern woman who sat in the front row. The editor of a St. Petersburg paper told me, with pride, that she was his mother. When she was asked to leave she refused categorically to go home.
“If I am going to be blown up,” she declared, “I can’t think of any better company to be blown up with.”
The meeting proceeded and I made a speech. We all left in peace and quiet, without incident. It confirmed my opinion that when people really mean business they don’t notify you beforehand.
Some months later, during the heat of the political campaign, I was to address an audience of schoolteachers in Indianapolis. When I reached the city I was warned that there would be few people in the old tabernacle building where I was scheduled to speak because, several days earlier, a newspaper had printed an editorial urging the teachers to boycott my lecture. Apparently the paper felt that one votes more intelligently in a presidential election if one hears only one side of the story. As my talk, however, dealt with foreign affairs and America’s position in world leadership, and did not touch on the campaign, its point did not seem particularly pertinent.
To my great pleasure, I addressed ten thousand teachers that morning. Not even standing room was available in the auditorium. A free citizenry, as I think these two incidents show, is not so easily coerced as a few people would like to believe.
Whether the editorial writer of the Indianapolis paper and the anonymous dealer in threats have learned this lesson I do not know. But it occurs to me that Mr. Khrushchev on his second and stormy visit to the United States must have realized that threats are often ineffective. During that visit he suffered two major defeats in the United Nations Assembly: one when the Asian and African resolution supporting Secretary-General Hammarskjöld’s actions in the Congo was passed without the Soviet amendments; second, when the delegate from Ireland was elected to the presidency of the General Assembly instead of the delegate from Czech-slovakia.
I wonder if the people of this country as a whole realize how extraordinary that whole situation was. Mr. Khrushchev arrived in force, bringing with him the heads of the satellite nations, as though they were bogeys to frighten children. His only convert appears to have been Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba.
Mr. Khrushchev’s objective was nothing less than the complete destruction of the United Nations, which he would have achieved if his suggestions that Mr. Hammarskjöld be ousted, that the UN be moved to another part of the world, and that a three-man governing board be set up, had been accepted. If he had been successful, the only machinery the world has through which it can work for peace would have been made impotent.
How great a loss, how disastrous a defeat for world peace and understanding and stability that would have been is evidenced these days in what is happening in the United Nations. More and more it is establishing itself as a place where reasonable decisions are being reached. In spite of Mr. Khrushchev’s posturing and intemperate language, there does seem to be a gradual approach to an effort to settle international differences in the Congo. This would not have been possible if there had not existed a United Nations where all the representatives could get together to air their differences and find a
modus vivendi.
It is very important that we recognize this.