Liveblogging World War II: June 29, 1944: Eleanor Roosevelt
MY DAY by Eleanor Roosevelt, June 29, 1944:
NEW YORK, Wednesday—Yesterday afternoon, a fine woman named Mrs. Rusk joined Mrs. Morgenthau and myself in a broadcast which had as its objective the awakening of interest among women to do their full part in the War Bond Drive and in war work. Mrs. Rusk confided to me that the boy in the service for whom she was buying bonds out of her weekly earnings is her only child, now overseas. It must be terrible to know that the dearest person you have in the world is fighting in Normandy, and not to be able to get any word from him for weeks on end.
When we were talking, I realized how hard it is to have only one person in whom all your love is centered. If you have more children you may have more concern since at all times some of them are apt to be in danger, but you do not have the sense of being totally vulnerable to one blow of fate.
The answer probably is that there is no way to compare degrees of worry or suffering. All you can do is to try to do your part in achieving the great objectives for which we fight, so that there always remains a sense of having something which you must do to keep faith with those you love.
I have spent a considerable amount of time listening to the radio during the Republican Convention. I heard Governor Warren, Representative Martin, ex-President Hoover and Mrs. Luce. A little later on, those of us who listen to both sides will hear different interpretations of certain occurences and a recital of some of the facts which are always omitted according to the interests of the speakers.
Mrs. Ray Clapper, in her radio comments on Mrs. Luce's speech, said she spoke with evident emotion, and there was no question but that Mrs. Clapper was moved when she made her comments. Mrs. Luce used very cleverly the appeal to all of us of "GI Joe" and "GI Jim." But I wondered, if we stood with these men before St. Peter, what any of us, Republicans or Democrats, could say with complete certainty of the future.
Just what conditions will we face at the end of the war? Just what will those conditions require of us as individuals and as a nation? One thing seems so often to be forgotten—plans and promises may all be honest and the administration of them my be remarkably well thought out, but we deal with all kinds of human beings—those who are motivated by greed and lust and hate, as well as those motivated by love and unselfishness and a desire to benefit others besides themselves.
The only thing we know with absolute certainty is that, in the future which lies before us, the one important thing is the kind of human beings who will predominate in our country and in the other countries of the world.
