Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes
… in a tense situation, if time could be given for everyone to discuss what was going on before they actually went to war, we might come to our senses. Most of us are taught as children to count to 30 before we open our mouths when we were angry, and that same lesson should apply to nations.
Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1962, First Lady (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), U. S. Delegate to the United Nations, Column, My Day, March 18,1936
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This was the week after he returned from his meeting with Hitler in Munich where he appeased the German Dictator. See {585941} for his famous naive statement.
His appeal was also in the name of concurring heads of state of Finland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Luxemburg, and Sweden.
The Chancellor was referring to the United States George W. Bush proposal for war with Iraq.
Although Great Britain had abolished slavery, British economic interests during the Civil War suffered because of the northern blockade of the South. Much political opinion in England was hostile to the blockade policies of the Union. Bright, a great admirer and supporter of the United Sates and the Union cause was concerned that the United States might drift into War with Great Britain. His letter to Senator Sumner was written with the understanding that it would be in shared with President Lincoln, and it was actually read at a cabinet meeting.
This is an interesting historical quotation because it shows the role of the Queen in the English Government at the middle of the 19th century. What the quotation shows is that the drafts of significant foreign policies were sent to the young 29 year old Queen for approval. However, her review was not perfunctory, In {630732} it showed how she analyzed proposed policies and pointed out flaws and shortcomings. In this quotation she not only criticized a part of the draft policy but actually wrote her own copy to be included. War was then raging in Lombardy between the Austrians under Marshal Radetzky and the Piedmontese under the King of Sardinia and she believed the Palmerston draft did not do enough to make the Austrians see England as an objective party. And she wanted to be much more proactive and have the British Foreign Ministry mediate the conflict. This would be like a President of the United States taking a draft of a foreign policy from the State Department, instead of either approving or disapproving it, redrafts it to add some additional elements and make the language more comfortable for the parties. And she did this when by U. S. standards she was not old enough to even run for Congress. (And women in the United Kingdom could not even vote.) Note that the formality of the time required that the Queen refer to herself in the third person and not the first.
Shlomo ben Yitzchak
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American political figure, diplomat and activist. She served as the First Lady of the United States from March 4, 1933, to April 12, 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms in office, making her the longest-serving First Lady of the United States. Roosevelt served as United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952. President Harry S. Truman later called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements.
