Eleanor Read online

  “This country teems with life and purpose,” she wrote of Israel, which she entered through the Mandelbaum Gate in divided Jerusalem. She spent six days there, dismayed at the schedule the Israeli government had arranged. “The program here is simply appalling. . . .” she wrote Ambassador Chester Bowles in New Delhi. “While I will gladly visit anything you feel is necessary and important, I don’t want to do it at this breakneck speed.” Could the official things be crowded into the first two days? “After that I would be delighted if they would furnish us with transportation facilities to go wherever we really wanted to go.”18

  Vain hope. As the plane made its approach to Karachi, David suddenly leaned over and touched her arm. “Look!” he said, pointing in astonishment at the huge crowd gathered at the airport. “That’s not for us,” she said firmly. “That’s for someone of importance who is arriving.” But the “sea of women” was there for her, and throughout her stay in the subcontinent she was to be attended by crowds the denseness of which she had never before encountered. They knelt in the streets when she passed. “I hadn’t realized how they cared about Franklin” was her comment when she spoke of this later.19

  In Pakistan she met with all of the dignitaries, female as well as male, lectured veiled Moslem women about the League of Woman Voters, taught the Virginia Reel to some emancipated Pakistani youngsters, visited Peshawar and Lahore, and made “a sentimental journey” to the Khyber Pass, which her father had visited seventy-two years earlier.

  “I have come here to learn,” she declared upon her arrival in New Delhi. “Eleanor Roosevelt zindabad!” (Long live Eleanor Roosevelt!) the crowd chanted, and Mme. Pandit, Nehru’s sister, garlanded her with a chain of cloves and fragrant beads. Her thirty-day tour took her to almost all the important cities in India. She received an honorary degree from Aligarh University in northern India and spoke to a large civic audience in Trivandrum, in southwest India. In New Delhi she addressed Parliament. That was the most challenging and touchy of the many speeches she made while in India. What were the points she should be careful about? she asked Ambassador Bowles before her appearance. He gave her a list several pages long. She looked it over thoughtfully and remarked, “What is there left to talk about?” Talk, however, she did, and without notes. The president and prime minister were in attendance as well as the deputies. The latter, however, were cool toward her, almost impatient, as if to say: Why do we waste our time with this woman? She ignored the lectern, advanced to the edge of the rostrum, and stood there, pocketbook in hand, wearing a flowered hat and sturdy shoes, her tummy slightly visible—an American presence—her warm smile perceptibly thawing out her audience. Instead of singing America’s praises, she suggested that India might well benefit from the mistakes that the United States had made during its developmental period. “Your problems are more difficult, but you are meeting them in the way our people met theirs.” She showed understanding of India’s desire for nonalignment. “Hear! Hear!” the deputies murmured as she said, “India’s neutrality is akin to that of United States’ foreign policy as far back as the thirties.” Bowles already had a splendid relationship with Nehru and most of India’s leaders, but the climate for his mission palpably improved after her speech.

  Mrs. Roosevelt was equally effective with the left-leaning, anti-American students, drawing heavily on her own experience with the youth movement in the United States in the thirties. Having heard from Nehru that too many of India’s students preferred the traditional law and humanities training to engineering and technical studies, she recalled that students with technical degrees had come through the Depresson in better style than the others. “Technical training, I imagine, is the best way by which you can help solve the problems of your country.”20

  Her experience in the thirties was particularly helpful in Allahabad, Nehru’s home district in northern India, where she went, accompanied by Mme. Pandit, to receive a degree from the university and to address the student body. In anticipation of her appearance, left-wing students published an open letter stating that Allahabad students were not interested in hearing her apologies for American imperialism. Nehru, to whom this was reported, angered at this rudeness to a guest of the country, ordered that the meeting be canceled. Timid university officials, fearful the meeting would turn into an unruly anti-American demonstration, overruled Mrs. Roosevelt’s plea that she be allowed to handle the situation. At least, she suggested, let the signatories of the open letter come to the house and she would answer their questions. Mme. Pandit was furious that the students should undertake to cross-examine Mrs. Roosevelt. “Don’t worry about it,” Mrs. Roosevelt sought to reassure her. “I have been booed for 15 minutes at a time—it doesn’t bother me. And their questions are things I have been through before; it sounds just like the Youth Congress back home.”

  The signatories of the letter were ushered in, except for one student whom Mme. Pandit would not have in the house because he had been particularly rude. That was a mistake. As Mrs. Roosevelt began to answer the questions of those who had filed in, the outcast assembled his followers, 3,000 of them, outside of the high fence topped with spikes that surrounded the Nehru compound, to protest the “insult” to their leader. Their shouts and chants could not be ignored. Mme. Pandit went out to speak to them. She climbed on a table and then on a chair on top of the table in order to be able to speak over the fence. She made no impact on the thousands of milling students. Finally, Mrs. Roosevelt insisted on going outside. She mounted the table and chair and proceeded to talk to the crowd. They did not like to receive their guest across a gate, one of the leaders shouted. Why did she not come to the students’ hall? She would if they went back, she called out to them. Mme. Pandit wanted guards to accompany her, but she would not hear of it. She would not even permit David to accompany her. She was willing to take the risk, but no one else was to be endangered. The hall was jammed when she reached it. She spoke briefly and then answered questions, sixteen in all, about American treatment of Negroes, America’s policy toward Red China, its attitude toward Indian nonalignment, and the like. The meeting ended in amiability and good will.21

  Another sentimental journey was to see the Taj Mahal in the moonlight. “At last I know why my father felt it was the one unforgettable thing he had seen in India. He always said it was the one thing he wanted us to see together.” Like her father, too, she dined with maharajahs and lunched at the palace of the Nizam of Hyderabad, and was furious that she allowed herself to be kept from riding an elephant. She inspected newly built industrial complexes and the American-aided Etawah rural development project. She placed a wreath at Rajghat, where Gandhi had been cremated, worked an ancient spinning wheel as Gandhi had done, crept into native mud huts. Everywhere, in packed city streets and along dusty village roads, the people met her, garlanded her, and the children cried, “Matajki Jai, Jai Hind!” (Victory to our revered Mother, victory to India!), and she responded with the Hindu gesture of namaste, folded hands and bowed head.22

  She had many talks with Nehru. He is “a remarkable person,” she wrote her Dutchess County neighbor Dorothy Bourne. “He bears the burdens, which are almost overwhelming, in a calm and courageous manner.” Nehru placed his guest house at her disposal. The first night they were there David Gurewitsch came to Maureen’s room. “Do you know there are snakes in Nehru’s garden and they may come in through the window?” An alarmed Maureen went to Mrs. Roosevelt. “Don’t you worry about that, dear,” she said with a lightheartedness that in no way reassured Maureen. “We’ll think about that in the morning.”23

  She came to know U.S. ambassador Chester Bowles and his wife, Stebbins, very well and was enormously impressed with the job they were doing. They lived in a modest house, sent their children to an Indian public school, and, instead of confining themselves to the diplomatic colony in New Delhi, tirelessly toured the countryside. “In one way I think perhaps Providence did something for us when he [Bowles] was defeated in the last election so that he could be a
vailable for his present post,” she wrote Truman.

  Everyone without exception, and I think I have met every government official thus far, tells me what a change there has been in the feeling towards the United States since Mr. Bowles’ arrival. They feel now that we understand them, that we are more understanding of their isolationism and that we are beginning to realize that they do not want to become communistic but their problems are so great they feel they cannot take sides.

  Bowles had done everything possible for her, her letter went on, “but I am afraid I can never accomplish what the Indians want as a result of my visit.” The Indians hoped she would be able to persuade public and congressional opinion to see India’s nonalignment as she had come to understand it, and thus pave the way for greater U.S. economic aid to India and less military assistance to Pakistan.24

  The great Indian expectations worried her. One evening there was another large dinner. David informed her he was sick of receptions and would take his dinner elsewhere. That to her was a rebuff, and, coming on top of her concern that India expected things of her she could not deliver, triggered one of her deep depressions. The next morning she told David that she had written out telegrams to Nehru, Acheson, Cass Canfield at Harper & Brothers, canceling her trip. “I represent the United States and they expect all these things from the United States and think that I have the power to deliver for them what they need,” she said in explanation. That was what she told him, recalled David. “But the real thing was that she was hurt and had fallen into one of her ‘what am I living for’ moods. . . .The whole day was impossible. You couldn’t get a word out of her.” But she recovered. “I do not know how many more official welcomes, lunches and dinners I can stand,” she wrote Acheson, “but I will do as much as I can.”25

  “Mrs. R. sound very cheerful and she has had a good press on this trip,” Tommy reported to Maude Gray. “A man from India who works in the UN called me today, he had just returned from India and wanted me to know that Mrs. R. made the greatest impression of anyone who has ever visited India.” “The problems here are enormous,” Mrs. Roosevelt wrote as her India itinerary drew to an end,

  but the resources are great. At the moment I think this is the most critical area in the world. If India becomes communist, the situation for the rest of us is desperate but if it becomes a leader India may succeed, not in preventing China from being communist, but in encouraging them to have a different type of communism. The government is becoming more outspoken in its belief in democracy and opposition to communism but it is trying to keep relations with China on an agreeable footing and even with Russia it is much less outspoken than many other countries.26

  The U.S. embassy in Taipei transmitted an invitation to Mrs. Roosevelt from Mme. Chiang Kai-shek to visit Formosa and be her house guest. Mrs. Roosevelt sent her regrets saying, “Must get home for Human Rights Commission meeting, so return direct from Djakarta.” The government of Burma wanted her to visit Rangoon. “Burmese regard Mrs. Roosevelt as most popular living American,” Acheson cabled her.27 Again she wrote “regret,” but subsequently relented. From India she went to Indonesia for a brief stay in Djakarta, where she dined with Achmed Sukarno and he showed her his collection of modern paintings. Then she flew home by way of Rangoon and Manila.

  On her return she promptly went down to Washington to report to Truman and to do what she could to deepen official understanding of the countries she had visited. Acheson sent the president a memo briefing him on Mrs. Roosevelt’s trip:

  She was received everywhere with great cordiality except in the Arab states. . . .Her trip to India and Pakistan was a great success, and she appears to have done much to increase understanding of the United States foreign policy objectives. . . .Ambassador Bowles has described her visit to India as a tremendous success and as having made a deep impression, particularly among students and the press.

  Although it was undertaken in a purely unofficial capacity, Mrs. Roosevelt’s journey has served the public interest exceedingly well. . . .28

  Word spread around official Washington that she had interesting things to report. Franklin Jr. arranged a meeting with Republicans and Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Sen. Herbert H. Lehman assembled a group of his colleagues at his apartment to hear her. She wrote to tell her friend Anna Rosenberg that she was coming to Washington again in May. Anna showed the note to her chief, Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, and he asked Mrs. Roosevelt to lunch with him and some of his “principal people.” Everywhere she argued that economic aid was essential if India and Pakistan were expected to develop strong and stable governments and that in the long run money spent on economic development would return greater dividends than money spent on military aid. Then an unexpected invitation. “I would be ever so grateful,” Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, head of the CIA, wrote her, “if you would be good enough to set aside some time when you are next in Washington in order that my people in the CIA may have the benefit of your observations on your recent trip through Southeast Asia. We are particularly interested in the thoughts and reactions of the people themselves, and I think you can help us understand them better.” He was very kind to ask her, she replied. “Would sometime in June be convenient?”29

  In the closing days of the Truman administration, she performed one final mission as ambassador-extraordinary. At the request of Claude G. Bowers, the United States ambassador in Chile, Truman sent her as head of the U.S. delegation to the inauguration of President Carlos Ibáñez. He had campaigned on an anti-American platform and had hinted that if elected he might follow the anti-American line of his friend Juan Perón of Argentina. Plans were being made to turn his inauguration into “an anti-Yankee festival.” In the six days that she was in Chile she completely overshadowed all the other delegations, including the four South American vice presidents and Perón’s delegation of thirty headed by his foreign minister. While Argentinians and others vying for Ibáñez’s favor spent their time at social functions and military receptions, she visited housing projects and health and hospital centers, toured slum areas, held a free-swinging press conference, and so won the hearts of press and people that not even the Communists dared to criticize her. And President Ibáñez paid tribute to her by appearing at her official reception and chatting cordially with her. She boosted the American stock, wrote the Christian Science Monitor, “from a low ebb of the past six months.” And it cited the remark of an American executive, “If the President himself had come down, he couldn’t have done more to boost pro-United States feeling.”30

  * This so annoyed the Australian president of the Assembly, Dr. Herbert V. Evatt, that his speech in Amiens said practically nothing about the UN and dealt almost exclusively with Australia’s role in the First World War.1

  10. RESIGNATION ACCEPTED

  It will be a sad day for him & in a way for the country, if he runs for President. He will run, but as a hero he will be tarnished & it will get worse & worse. We need our heros & we need him here & I doubt if we need him more as President.

  I’d rather see Truman back if he’ll really clean house!

  SO MRS. ROOSEVELT WROTE ABOUT GENERAL EISENHOWER on January 21, 1952, from the Paris General Assembly.1

  Her candidate was Adlai Stevenson, who, she thought, “would make a good President but I doubt if he can get the nomination.” This was before she left for India. By the time she returned Truman had announced his decision not to run again, thus clearing the way for other candidates. But Stevenson was proving equally reluctant to run. He told Truman early in March that he had made a commitment to the people of Illinois to run for re-election as governor, and he did not feel he could go back on that pledge. Several people came to ask her to urge Stevenson to run. “I will be for him if he runs,” she told them, “but he has to make the decision himself whether or not to run.” She could understand his feelings that if Eisenhower was the Republican candidate he would be in a better position to lead the Democratic party after 1952 as the successful g
overnor of Illinois than as the defeated candidate for president. “Governor Stevenson has bowed himself out which I deeply regret,” she wrote Chester Bowles in April, 1952, “and New York is making Averell Harriman its favorite son. Franklin, Jr. is going to run the citizens’ committee. . . .Kefauver appeals to me less and less.”2

  One candidacy she promptly squashed—her own. India Edwards, vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, director of the women’s division, and a Truman loyalist, reported that a Long Island housewife wanted advice on how to start a draft movement for Eleanor Roosevelt. “We think Eleanor Roosevelt is the only Democrat who could surely defeat General Eisenhower.” The more she thought of this suggestion, India Edwards went on, “the more I agreed with her so I am writing to ask you if there is any chance that you could be persuaded to accept the nomination if it should be offered to you. We have some good younger men—I personally think Adlai Stevenson is the outstanding one although in my position I cannot have a candidate—but I agree with my young Long Islander that you are the outstanding Democrat in the country.”3

  Mrs. Edwards sincerely admired Mrs. Roosevelt, but an Eleanor Roosevelt draft movement also had the advantage from the viewpoint of the Democratic managers, for whom Mrs. Edwards spoke, of tying up support that might otherwise go to Estes Kefauver. The Tennesseean was bidding for the nomination via the primary route, and, with his coonskin hat and relaxed manner, was already showing formidable vote-getting powers. The Truman loyalists wanted to slow him down. A draft movement for Eleanor Roosevelt was one way of doing so. But she would not play. She was as firmly opposed as ever to running for elective office, and she certainly had no wish to be a stalking horse for the establishment politicians. “I most certainly would not accept the nomination if it were offered to me,” she replied to Mrs. Edwards. “I doubt there is any chance for any woman at present. Governor Stevenson is the one I would favor.”4