The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (49 page)

Looking back on it, I don’t suppose I really did—though the cigars and the various favorite drinks I had to remember had something to do with it.

I think I might interrupt my story here to say that I have seen Princess Elizabeth on several occasions since she became queen. Her loveliness does not change but she seems to me still more serious, as one might expect her to be under the burden of her duties.

On one occasion when I had been invited to the palace for a chat with her, a young secretary escorted me to my automobile.

“It must be terribly hard,” I said, “for anyone so young to have so many official responsibilities and also carry on as a wife and mother.”

He looked at me with what I thought was a surprised expression and said briskly, “Oh, no. Not at all. The Queen is very well departmentalized.” How does one departmentalize one’s heart? I thought.

There had been a warm behind-the-scenes controversy over the statue. Sir Campbell Stuart, head of the Pilgrims Association, which raised the money for the memorial, and the sculptor, Sir William Reid Dick, strongly felt that Franklin should be depicted standing, facing into the wind. But Winston Churchill, who was an artist himself, took issue. He argued that because Franklin could not walk the statue should show him in a sitting position.

The controversy was much in my mind after King George had spoken at the ceremony and then walked with me to the statue for the unveiling. I pulled a cord and, as the covering dropped away, I found myself looking at a statue showing Franklin as he was some years before his death. The figure was standing, with one hand gripping a cane and with the familiar cape flowing back from his shoulders. It gave the impression of a young, vigorous man and I think that is the impression my husband would have liked to leave with the British people. I have never regretted that it was done as a standing figure.

The sculptured figure has two shallow pools on either side of it and around the pools are low marble seats where, as the landscape architect explained to me, people could come and sit and eat their lunches. Carved on the back of the four seats are the Four Freedom declarations. The architect said he felt Franklin had always liked to have the people close to him. “And here I have made this possible,” he added.

Judging by what I observed when I visited Grosvenor Square in later years, the people agree with him. There are always people there and I have rarely seen the statue without at least one small home-made bouquet resting on the marble base.

Thirty
    

Learning the Ropes in the UN

NOW I WANT
to turn back to late in 1945 when there began one of the most wonderful and worthwhile experiences in my life.

In December of 1945 I received a message from President Truman. He reminded me that the first or organizing meeting of the United Nations General Assembly would be held in London, starting in January, 1946, and he asked me if I would serve as a member of the United Nations delegation.

“Oh, no! It would be impossible!” was my first reaction. “How could I be a delegate to help organize the United Nations when I have no background or experience in international meetings?”

Miss Thompson urged me not to decline without giving the idea careful thought. I knew in a general way what had been done about organizing the United Nations. After the San Francisco meeting in 1945, when the Charter was written, it had been accepted by the various nations, including our own, through their constitutional procedures. I knew, too, that we had a group of people, headed by Adlai Stevenson, working with representatives of other member nations in London to prepare for the formal organizing meeting. I believed the United Nations to be the one hope for a peaceful world. I knew that my husband had placed great importance on the establishment of this world organization.

At last I accepted in fear and trembling. But I might not have done so if I had known at that time that President Truman could only nominate me as a delegate and that the nomination would have to be approved by the United States Senate, where certain senators would disapprove of me because of my attitude toward social problems and more especially youth problems. As it turned out, some senators did protest to the President against my nomination but only one, Senator Theodore G. Bilbo of Mississippi, actually voted against me. He had been critical of statements I had made previously in regard to discrimination against Negroes, but when some of the newspapermen in Washington asked him why he opposed my nomination he replied only that he had so many reasons he would have to write a book in order to cover them all. Anyway, my nomination was confirmed by the Senate, and I still marvel at it.

I might point out here that as a delegate to the United Nations and, later, as a member of the Commission on Human Rights I received a salary that would have amounted to about $14,300 a year, except that one is paid only for the days one actually works. My transportation and hotel room bills were paid by the government and I received around $12 a day for expenses when required to travel abroad. My actual expenses always exceeded these figures, but I never knew just how much I was out of pocket because I didn’t keep a complete account of them. Therefore, the only sums I could deduct from my income tax were those that I recorded for official entertainment. I suppose my service as a delegate for seven years actually cost me a considerable sum.

I did not know that I was permitted to take a secretary with me to the meeting in London and when I said good-by to Tommy I was rather heavyhearted at the thought of crossing the Atlantic Ocean alone in January. Members of the delegation sailed on the
Queen Elizabeth
and the dock was swarming with reporters and news photographers who surrounded the senators and congressmen on the delegation to get lastminute statements and pictures. Everything had quieted down, however, when I drove in my own car to the dock and got aboard rather late and managed to find my way to my stateroom.

The first thing I noticed in my stateroom was a pile of blue sheets of paper on the table. These blue sheets turned out to be documents, most of them marked “secret,” that apparently related to the work of delegates. I had no idea where they had come from but assumed they were meant for me so I looked through them. The language was complicated but they obviously contained background information on the work to be taken up by the General Assembly as well as statements of our government’s position on various problems.

I promptly sat down and began reading—or trying to read. It was dull reading and very hard work. I had great difficulty in staying awake, but I knew my duty when I saw it and read them all. By the time I finished I supposed that the Department of State had no more secrets from me, but I would have found it hard to reveal anything because I was seldom really sure of the exact meaning of what was on the blue sheets.

At the time I feared this was because I couldn’t understand plain English when it concerned State Department matters, but I changed my mind on this score because others seemed to have the same difficulty. I remember one occasion later when our secretary of state, General George C. Marshall, summoned all members of the delegation to a special meeting to discuss our position on an important point, which is not pertinent to this story. Because of some question I asked, he evidently felt I was not clear on the matter and he went over it again.

“Is that clear?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I replied, “but that is not the way I read it in the newspapers.”

Somewhat irritated, the general said that I was mistaken and that he would send me a State Department paper covering the subject.

He did and I read it carefully. Then I read it twice. Still I didn’t know what our position was. I sent the paper around to one of the department’s best legal minds and asked him to explain it to me. He sent me a note in reply: “If this is what they send the President on the subject, God help the President!” Then I asked one of the delegation’s most experienced advisers to come to my room and showed him the blue paper.

“You must be able to explain this,” I said. “You must have had a part in writing this paper.”

He studied it for a while and then said, “Yes, I had, but obviously it was not intended for you or anybody else to know what this paper meant.”

But I am getting far ahead of my journey to London. One day, as I was walking down the passageway to my cabin, I encountered Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, a Republican, and before the war a great champion of isolationism. He stopped me.

“Mrs. Roosevelt,” he said in his deep voice, “we would like to know if you would serve on Committee Three.”

I had two immediate and rather contradictory reactions to the question. First, I wondered who “we” might be. Was a Republican senator deciding who would serve where? And why, since I was a delegate, had I not been consulted about committee assignments? But my next reaction crowded these thoughts out of my mind. I realized that I had no more idea than the man in the moon what Committee Three might be. So I kept my thoughts to myself and humbly agreed to serve where I was asked to serve.

“But,” I added quickly, “will you or someone kindly see that I get as much information as possible on Committee Three?”

The senator promised and I went on to my cabin. The truth was that at that time I did not know whom to ask for information and guidance. I had no idea where all those blue documents marked “secret” that kept appearing in my cabin came from; for all I knew, they might have originated in outer space instead of in the Department of State.

Later I discovered that there was at first some concern among the Democrats on the delegation whether Senator Vandenberg would “go along” on the United States plan in London or whether he might stir up a fuss. But their suspicions proved groundless.

“When the Charter meeting of the United Nations was held in San Francisco,” the senator told me, “I didn’t want to be a delegate. I didn’t much believe in international organization along this line, but your husband urged me to go and insisted that I could vote exactly as I felt was right. On that basis I went.”

Needless to say, Senator Vandenberg became one of the strongest supporters of the United Nations; it was he who worked hard to keep the budget moderate so that there would be no danger of driving out the smaller, weaker countries. His influence meant much in the early years when support was badly needed for this bold new concept of an organization that might be our only hope of avoiding future wars.

We stayed at Claridge’s in London. Our offices were on Grosvenor Square about two blocks from the embassy. When I arrived there my adviser, Durward Sandifer, said that there were one or two members of the delegation’s staff who would be available to discuss with me the problems of Committee Three.

As I learned more about my work I realized why I had been put on Committee Three, which dealt with humanitarian, educational and cultural questions. There were many committees dealing with the budgetary, legal, political and other questions, and I could just see the gentlemen of our delegation puzzling over the list and saying:

“Oh, no! We can’t put Mrs. Roosevelt on the political committee. What would she do on the budget committee? Does she know anything about legal questions? Ah, here’s the safe spot for her—Committee Three. She can’t do much harm there!”

Oddly enough, I felt much the same way about it. On the ship coming over, however, State Department officials had held “briefings” for the delegates. We listened to experts on various subjects explain the problems that would be brought up, give the background on them, and then explain the general position of the United States on various controversial points. I attended all these sessions and, discovering there also were briefings for newspaper people aboard the ship, I went to all their meetings too. As a result of these briefings and of my talks with Mr. Sandifer and others, I began to realize that Committee Three might be much more important than had been expected. And, in time, this proved to be true.

One early incident in London gave me cold chills. Papers kept coming to my desk—and most of them marked “secret” or something of the sort. One morning when I walked into my office I found a notice to report at once to the security officer. I did not know where to find the security officer but, after numerous inquiries, I was directed to his office in the building. He confronted me with the fact that his staff, making their rounds at night, had found on my desk a paper that was marked “top secret.” I recalled then that I had left my office at a time when my secretary was out and I had presumed that she would put all papers away when she returned and then lock up the office. Apparently she had not and I was guilty of a serious offense, which I never repeated. Thereafter I made certain that the papers were locked away in the file and that the office was locked. I also always carried personally the briefcase in which I took documents home for study, keeping it within reach or putting it in a safe place. I frequently noticed in later years, however, that information in papers marked “top secret” appeared in the newspapers even before it reached us. But that is one of the curious inconsistencies that you have to accept in government work.

Secretary of State James F. Byrnes had not accompanied the delegation, but he arrived by air soon after we reached London. He disliked delegation meetings and briefings and I never knew him to call one, except on one occasion, when the meeting was a kind of cocktail party at which we talked about our work in a desultory fashion. However, Mr. Byrnes stayed only a short time. Thereafter we had regular briefing sessions in which State Department experts—or perhaps Edward R. Stettinius, who later succeeded Mr. Byrnes as head of the delegation—discussed each morning the important items on the day’s program. These meetings were often held in a large room where around nine o’clock in the morning all the U.S. delegates and their advisers would gather, perhaps forty or fifty persons in all. Normally the head of the delegation would preside and outline the high points of the work to be done while the rest of us followed his remarks by reference to the printed or mimeographed documents that had been prepared for us by the experts before the meeting. Then, when certain complicated problems were to be discussed in detail, a State Department official with special knowledge of the subject would take over. If any points were not clear, the five delegates or their alternates would ask questions.