Mrs. R. and Her Welfare World

There may be a few cynics (Mr. Arthur Krock seems to be among them) who will not go quite all the way with Prof. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., in finding Eleanor Roosevelt a “very good and very wise old lady” (very, mind you) and a “luminous idealist, yearning for the good, the true and the beautiful,” but I suppose we must all grant her to be “the leading American woman of our time,” and even “the incomparable First Lady of the World” (I take it that “UN” is what Prof. Schlesinger means by “World”). In celebration of her 74th birthday on October 11, the publishers brought out three volumes of incense, one of them (On My Own, Harper, $4.00) swung by her own lusty hand. If the normally unsung 74th rates a trio, think of the treats ahead for the three-quarter century mark—and then the Centennial!

As a matter of fact, I hope that some day somebody will write a biography instead of a blurb about Eleanor Roosevelt, but I imagine this will have to wait for an age that can look at her from outside her own categories. Her career, of course, is a pushover for amateur Freudians— so juicy, indeed, that even this year’s acolytes can’t resist some sly smacks of their fulsome pens.

JB

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James Burnham

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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There may be a few cynics (Mr. Arthur Krock seems to be among them) who will not go quite all the way with Prof. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., in finding Eleanor Roosevelt a “very good and very wise old lady” (very, mind you) and a “luminous idealist, yearning for the good, the true and the beautiful,” but I suppose we must all grant her to be “the leading American woman of our time,” and even “the incomparable First Lady of the World” (I take it that “UN” is what Prof. Schlesinger means by “World”). In celebration of her 74th birthday on October 11, the publishers brought out three volumes of incense, one of them (On My Own, Harper, $4.00) swung by her own lusty hand. If the normally unsung 74th rates a trio, think of the treats ahead for the three-quarter century mark—and then the Centennial!

As a matter of fact, I hope that some day somebody will write a biography instead of a blurb about Eleanor Roosevelt, but I imagine this will have to wait for an age that can look at her from outside her own categories. Her career, of course, is a pushover for amateur Freudians— so juicy, indeed, that even this year’s acolytes can’t resist some sly smacks of their fulsome pens.