The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (67 page)

More and more, I think, people are coming to realize that what affects an individual affects mankind. To take an extreme example, one neglected case of smallpox can infect a whole community. This is equally true of the maladjusted child, who may wreak havoc in his neighborhood; of the impoverished, who become either economic burdens or social burdens, and, in any case, are wasted as human beings. Abuses anywhere, however isolated they may appear, can end by becoming abuses everywhere.

I learned, too, while I was groping for more and more effective ways of trying to cope with community and national and world problems, that you can accomplish a great deal more if you care deeply about what is happening to other people than if you say in apathy or discouragement, “Oh, what can I do? What use is one person? I might as well not bother.”

Actually I suppose the caring comes from being able to put yourself in the position of the other person. If you cannot imagine, “This might happen to me,” you are able to say to yourself with indifference, “Who cares?”

I think that one of the reasons it is so difficult for us, as a people, to understand other areas of the world is that we cannot put ourselves imaginatively in their place. We have no famine. But if we were actually to see people dying of starvation we would care quite a bit. We would be able to think, “These could be my people.”

Because of our rather extraordinary advantages, it is difficult for us to understand the other peoples of the world. We started with tremendous national resources. Our very isolation, in those early years, forced us to develop them. Many of the people who settled here had escaped from poverty and want and oppression and lack of opportunity. They wanted to forget their background and they soon did, because the difficulty of travel made it hard for them to go back and refresh their memories. So we grew out of the past and away from it. Now it would be valuable for us to remember the conditions of that Old World. It would help us to understand what the poorer countries need and want today.

And this, I suppose, indicates what has happened to me in seventy-five years. Though now as always it is through individuals that I see and understand human needs, I find that my over-all objectives go beyond individuals to the fate of mankind. It is within that larger framework that one must think today if mankind is to survive the threat that hangs, in a mushroom cloud, over it.

So I come to the larger objective, not mine, except as I am an American, but America’s. It seems to me that America’s objective today should be to try to make herself the best possible mirror of democracy that she can. The people of the world can see what happens here. They watch us to see what we are going to do and how well we can do it. We are giving them the only possible picture of democracy that we can: the picture as it works in actual practice. This is the only way other peoples can see for themselves how it works; and can determine for themselves whether this thing is good in itself, whether it is better than what they have, better than what other political and economic systems offer them.

Now, while we are a generous nation, giving with a free hand and with an open heart wherever there is need or suffering (that we can understand, at least), we have one weakness that, considering our political maturity as a nation, is rather immature. We continue to expect the world to be grateful to us and to love us. We are hurt and indignant when we do not receive gratitude and love.

Gratitude and love are not to be had for the asking; they are not to be bought. We should not want to think that they are for sale. What we should seek, rather than gratitude or love, is the respect of the world. This we can earn by enlightened justice. But it is rather naïve of us to think that when we are helping people our action is entirely unselfish. It is not. It is not unselfish when we vaccinate the public against smallpox. It is a precautionary measure, but nonetheless good in itself.

Other nations are quite aware that when we try to bolster up their economy and strengthen their governments and generally help them to succeed there is a certain amount of self-interest involved. They are inevitably going to be on the lookout to see what we want in return. Consciously we do not want anything, but unconsciously almost anything we do, as a nation or through the United Nations, is intended to benefit us or our cause, directly or indirectly. So there is no reason for demanding either gratitude or love.

Our obligation to the world is, primarily, our obligation to our own future. Obviously we cannot develop beyond a certain point unless the other nations develop too. When our natural resources peter out, we must seek them in other countries. We cannot have trade if we are the only solvent nation. We need not only areas from which to buy but areas to which we can sell, and we cannot have this in underdeveloped areas.

We must, as a nation, begin to realize that we are the leaders of the non-Communist world, that our interests at some point all touch the interests of the world, and they must be examined in the context of the interests of the world. This is the price of leadership.

We cannot, indeed, continue to function in a narrow orbit or in a self-enclosed system. We cannot weigh or evaluate even our domestic problems in their own context alone. We no longer have merely domestic issues. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the question I am asked everywhere in the world:

“We hear you Americans pay to keep land out of production because there is too much to eat. Is there no better way to use your ability to produce food than to get rid of it?”

This is a home question; it is literally of vital moment to the millions of starving in the world who look to us. I do not see how we can retain world leadership and yet continue to handle our problems as though they concerned us alone; they concern the world. We feel that a surplus of food is only an embarrassment. We solve it as though only we were concerned. But think of the hungry people and their bitterness as the food that could save their lives is plowed under. To say they think it highly unfair is to put it mildly.

We have never put our best brains to work on the ways we can produce to the maximum, give our farmers a better income, and still employ our surpluses in a way to solve the pressing needs of the world, without upsetting our economy or that of friendly nations who might fear we were giving food to markets they are accustomed to selling to.

We have a great variety of climate, we can grow almost anything we want. Canada can grow only wheat. There need be no clash of interests here.

How have we tried to “solve” matters up to now? We cut our acreage and store the surplus or dump it; we pay our farmers too little to give them an income on a par with that of industrial workers, so we have a dwindling farm population. No one has ever sat down and said, “This is a problem you
must
work out.”

It is in ways like these, using our intelligence and our good will and our vast capacity to produce, that we can meet and overcome the Communist threat and prove that democracy has more to give the world.

All this seems like a far cry from my seventy-fifth birthday and yet I find that, as I have grown older, my personal objectives have long since blended into my public objectives. I have, of course, realized that I cannot continue indefinitely the strenuous life I now lead, the constant traveling from state to state, from country to country.

What, then? Then, I thought, even if I must relinquish much of my traveling, perhaps there is a way in which I can still reach people with things that it seems important for them to hear. The most practical way of doing this is through a radio or television program. My radio and television agent shook his head.

“You are too controversial a figure,” he told me. “The sponsors would be afraid of you. Some of them feel so strongly about you that they believe the public would not buy any product on whose program you might appear.”

I remembered then that some years earlier the head of the Red Cross had been afraid to accept a donation for fear that my participation would drive away other subscribers!

It is startling to realize that one is so deeply, fanatically disliked by a number of people. And yet, while I weigh as honestly as I can their grounds for disapproval, when I feel that I am right in what I do, it seems to me that I cannot afford, as a self-respecting individual, to refuse to do a thing merely because it will make me disliked or bring down a storm of criticism on my head. I often feel that too many Americans today tend to reject the thing, however right they believe it to be, that they want to do because they fear they will be unpopular or will find themselves standing alone instead of in the comfortable anonymity of the herd.

As a result, when I believe, after weighing the evidence, that what I am doing is right I go ahead and try as hard as I can to dismiss from my mind the attitude of those who are hostile. I don’t see how else one can live.

One day my radio agent appeared, looking very much surprised, to say that he had had an offer for me to do television commercials for an organization that sold margarine.

“I know this isn’t the kind of thing you had in mind,” he pointed out, “but if a conservative firm feels that you can sell their product I think you should at least try it. It may break the ice for you.”

I thought it over. I had to face the fact that I would be bitterly criticized for doing commercials. On the other hand, if this was a field I wanted to open up I ought at least to see whether I could do it, no matter how disagreeable the reaction of many people might be.

So at length I agreed. The only stipulation I made was that, outside of selling the product, I should be allowed to say one thing of my own that I thought had value. So I reminded the audience that there were hungry people in the world.

There were, of course, as many disagreeable comments as I had expected, but the program went all right and the sponsors discovered that, after all, I did not prevent people from buying their product!

This year (1960-61) I am going to introduce a program of refugee stories, as my participation in the Refugee Year work of the United Nations.

The purpose of this refugee organization, now headed by Mr. Lint, is to try to reduce the population of the refugee camps in Europe; to wipe them out if that is humanly possible. Ten years is too long for these people to have lived in camps, stateless and with no solution in sight for their problem. There are children who have never known any other life.

Actually a good deal has been accomplished. The number of refugees has been greatly reduced. Where they still remain in camps, an effort has been made to provide permanent housing and to find them jobs. A number of countries have accepted what is called “hard-core cases,” those who are blind or have other disabilities. Of course, I am referring now only to the refugee camps in Europe. There are between 800,000 and a million refugees in the Near East and no one knows how many in Hong Kong and in China.

The refugees of the world are a constant and painful reminder of the breakdown of civilization through the stupidity of war. They are its permanent victims. No time in history has known anything like the number of stateless people who have existed or survived the rigors of the past thirty years.

When we closed the work of the United Nations Relief Association in the United Nations we set up the present Commission for Refugees with headquarters in Geneva. No money, however, was set aside for this. Its function is to see that these people are given papers which will allow them to get work, to make life more possible for them, though they are still stateless.

Mr. Lint discovered that there were still many who needed financial help and he requested aid for a fund which he could use for this purpose. Every year he comes to the United States to get further funds to meet these needs.

In the American Association of the United Nations we were willed a considerable sum of money which was to be applied to alleviating the conditions of refugees. We had to set up a group to handle this, and, of course, we had to have the consent of the high commissioner to turn the money over to Mr. Lint for this purpose. Before long even this ugly scar of war may be healed.

Interspersed among my other activities, traveling and lecturing, work with the A.A.U.N., radio and television appearances, I continue to entertain a number of interesting people who visit Hyde Park from time to time, sometimes to leave flowers at my husband’s grave or to visit the library, sometimes to come as guests to my cottage, either through arrangements made with the State Department or independently.

Perhaps the most confusing time was in September, 1959, when the visits of Princess Beatrice of Holland and Premier Khrushchev almost overlapped. The little princess came at the time of the Hudson-Champlain celebration. Like most foreign visitors she had been feted and had listened to speeches and had attended functions until she was exhausted.

When she reached my cottage she was very tired. There was an hour free before dinner, I told her, and she said wearily to her lady in waiting, “Please open my bed.”

Young as she was, she had been living under the strictest protocol and had been entertained, for the most part, by much older people, dignified statesmen, and so forth.

There was, I assured her, going to be no protocol. I planned a buffet supper, with people waiting on themselves and seated at small tables, and my guests for her were some boys from Harvard and my granddaughter, who was about her own age.

Later my granddaughter told me of their conversation. The princess told them that she was going to college and how much she valued the time there. She had even regretted losing a month from college because of her trip to America. This was the last time in her life that she would be able to live naturally with other people.

She told them, too, what difficulties arose for young people in her position. There were so few people left whom they could marry.

She was a very gentle, simple person, very sweet and simply brought up.

On the morning of the day she left Mr. Khrushchev and his wife were to arrive on their first visit to the United States. The princess and her party—we had sixteen for breakfast—left at nine in the morning. We were to feed an unknown number of members of Mr. Khrushchev’s party and tables were set up and ready for them, all managed by my faithful and capable couple.