"My Day"

December 22,1945

NEW YORK, Friday - - Now that I have been confirmed by the Senate⁽¹⁾, I can say how deeply honored I feel that President Truman has named me one of the delegates⁽²⁾ to the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization. It is an honor, but also a very great responsibility. I know it has come to me largely because my husband laid the foundation for this Organization through which we all hope to build world peace.

In many ways I am sure I will find much to learn; but all of life is a constant education. Some things I can take to this first meeting - - a sincere desire to understand the problems of the rest of the world and our relationship to them; a real good-will for all peoples throughout the world; a hope that I shall be able to build a sense of personal trust and friendship with my co-workers, for without that type of understanding our work would be doubly difficult.

This first meeting, I imagine, will be largely concerned with organization and the choice of a site within this country as a permanent home.

Being the only woman delegate from this country, I feel a great responsibility, also, to the women of my own country. In other lands women have gone with their men into the fighting forces.⁽³⁾ Here we have more nearly followed the traditional pattern of working and waiting at home.

To be sure, some of our work was done outside the home in places which the mothers and wives of earlier days never would have dreamed could be a working women's sphere.⁽⁴⁾ But fundamentally we were doing what we could to help our men win the war. We were striving to give them, when they returned, the kind of country and the kind of home they had dreamed of and sometimes gave even their lives to preserve.

I feel a great responsibility to the youth who fought the war, when they were not called upon to make the supreme sacrifice, they gave years of their lives which most of them would rather have spent in building their personal futures. Some of them will carry handicaps incurred in fighting the war, throughout the rest of their lives. Every one of us has a deep and solemn obligation to them which we should fulfill by giving all that we are capable of giving to the making of the peace so they can feel that the maximum good has come from their sacrifice.

Willy-nilly, everyone of us cares more for his own country than for any other. That is human nature. We love the bit of land where we have grown to maturity and known the joys and sorrows of life. The time has come however when we must recognize that our mutual devotion to our own land must never blind us to the good of all lands and of all peoples.

In the end, as Wendell Wilkie said, we are "One World"⁽⁵⁾ and that which injures any one of us, injures all of us. Only by remembering this will we finally have a chance to build a lasting peace.

I am sure in President Truman's heart, as in that of everyone of our delegates, is the prayer that in this coming year, we may make measurable strides towards good will and peace on earth.

TMS, AERP, FDRL
 

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Editor's Notes:

1. Majority Leader Alben Barkley polled the Senate, at Truman's request, to see if the Senate would confirm ER. He found some opposition (John Foster Dulles thought her too liberal and William Fulbright thought her so inexperienced that her appointment could signal disrespect for the UN); however, only Theodore Bilbo, who objected to her civil rights positions, voted against her confirmation. (Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor: The Years Alone [New York, 1972], 37; Alfred Steinberg, Mrs. R.: The Life of Eleanor Roosevelt [New York, 1958], 320.
2. In addition to ER, the members of the American delegation were Senators Tom Connally and Arthur Vandenberg, Secretary of State James Brynes, and United Nations Ambassador (and former Secretary of State) Edward Stettinius. The alternates included John Foster Dulles, who was Thomas Dewey's advisor on foreign policy. (Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [New York, 2001], 27.)
3. During World War II, Soviet women engaged in combat in every branch of the armed forces. Their service as combat pilots was especially notable.
4. Two million women, encouraged by the Rosie the Riveter campaign, worked in defense plants building aircraft and destroyers and manufacturing weapons and a wide variety of military necessities. By 1943, half of the workers at Boeing's Seattle plant were women. (Nancy Woloch, Woman and The American Experience [New York, 1994], 460.
5. Wilkie, though defeated by FDR in 1940, accepted FDR's 1942 request to fly around the world to show that political opponents were united in their determination to defeat fascism. Wilkie visited at battle zones in Africa, the Soviet Union and China and described his goodwill journey in One World. Published in 1943, it quickly became an influential plea for post-war international cooperation.