The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (53 page)

We finally won our point by only four votes, but taking the first step turned out to be even harder than we had expected. Progress had been made, but the Covenants were not well drafted, nor is the drafting yet complete, and I doubt whether they are likely to be accepted in their present form. Looking back over the work that has been done, I now believe it would be best to start anew by putting into the Covenant on civil and political rights only a few basic rights on which all could agree and to provide for adding other rights as it becomes possible to have them generally accepted.

The last session of the General Assembly that I attended in Paris was in the autumn of 1951, a session that continued after a brief Christmas holiday into February of 1952. Toward the end of this session Ambassador Austin became ill and for a short time I presided over the United States delegations. The heads of other delegations expressed affection for Senator Austin personally.

“We have not always agreed with the policies of the United States,” most of them said in one way or another. “But if Ambassador Austin told us something was true, we knew it was true.”

I served during the autumn of 1952, but at the end of each session all delegates automatically resign to permit the President to have a free hand in choosing his representatives. In the 1952 elections, a Republican administration came into power and all of us who were Democrats knew that our services with the United Nations had come to an end. But my interest in the United Nations had grown steadily during six years, and later I volunteered to work with the American Association for the United Nations so that I would not be out of touch with the work of the one organization that has the machinery to bring together all nations in an effort to maintain world peace.

Thirty-three
    

Foreign Travels

ALTHOUGH I HAD
been bustling back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean rather like a harassed commuter for six years, my really extensive foreign travels did not begin until 1952 after the General Assembly in Paris.

The end of my duties as a delegate later that year meant that I no longer had to adjust my life to a schedule of meetings of the Assembly or the Human Rights Commission in various cities at frequent intervals. Though it was necessary for me to spend a certain amount of time traveling in connection with my work for the American Association for the United Nations, I had much greater flexibility in my schedule and was able to take longer trips abroad, always as a newspaperwoman and sometimes also as a representative of the A.A.U.N.

I had received a number of invitations to visit various countries. One was extended by Prime Minister Nehru. The invitation stuck in my mind and, as the Assembly was ending its sessions in Paris early in 1952, I decided the time might be right. “Instead of going back to New York as usual,” I remarked to my secretary, “why not go home the long way—around the world. We’ve already got a good start.”

So Mr. Nehru renewed his invitation and our ambassador to India, Chester Bowles, seemed pleased with the idea. Another thing that influenced me was that I had long wanted to visit Israel, particularly since I had seen the Jewish refugee camps in Germany and learned more of the eagerness of most of the refugees to migrate to Israel. As soon as I began making arrangements to stop in Israel on the way to India, I was approached by Charles Malik of Lebanon, whom I had come to know well on the Human Rights Commission.

“I know that you’re going to stop in Israel on the way to India,” he said. “I really don’t think you should stop there without visiting some of the Arab countries. You should see more than one country in the Middle East.”

A little later he made arrangements for me and my secretary, Miss Corr, and we flew directly from Paris to Beirut, Lebanon, where we arrived late one evening. Beirut was a beautiful and peaceful-looking city even at night, with the Mediterranean breaking softly on its beaches. Next morning when I went out to get into the car, I discovered I was to be escorted by a lorry filled with soldiers.

I had wondered a bit about the attitude of the people toward me because I had always been outspoken in my support of the state of Israel, but everyone seemed friendly and I decided to ignore the presence of the soldiers. When we halted to visit some historic site, the truck dashed up and the soldiers leaped out to set up “lines of defense” around us. This was an indication that the government was not at all certain about the kind of reception I would be given by the people. At least the officials were taking a rather alarmist view.

Actually, there were no signs of hostility and after a short time I became thoroughly irritated by what seemed to me intolerable nonsense. I insisted that they get rid of the soldiers at once. They did so but I was certain that throughout my visit there was always a guard of some kind nearby.

I found my visit to the Arab countries extremely interesting. Lebanon is perhaps the most Westernized of the Arab countries. We had planned to drive to Syria, but there was so much snow in the mountain passes that we went by air to Damascus, an amazing city with narrow streets and bazaars.

The newspapermen to whom I talked in Syria were particularly difficult. They were bitterly nationalistic and bitterly opposed to Israel and they badgered me with questions about why I should support the Israeli cause.

“The Balfour resolution for establishment of a Jewish homeland was accepted by the United States and Great Britain after the First World War,” I usually replied. “This action encouraged the buying of land by the Jews on the assurance that a homeland would be created for them in Palestine. I feel that it practically committed our government to assist in the creation of a government there eventually, because there cannot be a homeland without a government.”

From Damascus I drove to Amman, Jordan, but our time was short and I had a chance to meet only two or three government officials. They were greatly concerned with the problem of the Palestinian refugees who had moved out of Israeli territory during the warfare between Israel and the Arab states and had been put into camps in Jordan. I visited many of these camps during my trips and found them distressing beyond words.

I had seen various refugees camps in Europe and had been impressed by the way the inmates kept their hopes alive and tried to make their temporary quarters into “homes” even under the most difficult conditions. I had been particularly impressed by the burning desire of many Jewish refugees to get to Israel. Now, in the Arab countries, I learned something of the grave problem of refugees from Israel.

The Arab refugee camps were the least hopeful I had ever seen. One of the principal reasons for this, I believe, was that nothing had been done to preserve the skills of the people. They seemed to have little or nothing to look forward to and nothing to do. Under such conditions the adults are likely to lose their skills and the children grow up uninstructed.

“Why,” I asked my official guide, “are these people not given something to do? They might be making things to go on the market or helping to produce food. If they lose their skills they will be worthless citizens in any country they may finally settle in.”

The guide gave a kind of helpless shrug. “There is unemployment in most of the Arab countries, and we cannot permit these people to seek work that would put them in competition with the citizens of the country.”

The standard of living in the camps we visited was low and the housing was inadequate. I visited one tent where a woman showed us her small baby, who was ill. “The baby was bitten by a snake yesterday,” the woman explained, as she put it back on the floor of the tent. There was nothing to prevent snakes from entering, and babies lying on the floor were an easy prey.

The refugees were fed on a budget of three cents per day per person. That would seem to be a pitifully small sum even for countries with a low standard of living but it represented more food than was available to some of the nomads living in the desert.

Going from the Arab countries through the Mandelbaum Gate into Israel was, to me, like breathing the air of the United States again. The Mandelbaum Gate is nothing much, a movable barrier, with soldiers on guard. But once I was through the barrier I felt that I was among people with a purpose, people dedicated to fulfilling a purpose.

I spent seven days in Israel, the same number I had spent in the Arab countries. The health program is a monumental work. Much had been done in the past by Hadassah, which built and ran hospitals made possible by general private donations of persons in many countries.

I was greatly impressed by what the Israelis had done to reclaim the desert and make it productive, to develop the country industrially and to accept as permanent citizens hundreds of thousands of refugees from war and persecution in Europe and elsewhere. But I was even more impressed when I returned to Israel three years later and saw how much had been done in that short time.

Of course, no one should imagine that everything is perfect in Israel. The country has many large and small problems of all kinds to overcome, including the necessity for establishing a sound basis for its economic existence. A great deal has been done. The desert has been made to blossom, but there remain grave obstacles, such as the efficient use of water, to a peaceful and prosperous future. I believe that with reason and patience solutions can be found and they will greatly benefit not Israel alone but the entire area.

Not all of Israel’s problems are economic. One issue that must be faced by the government is that of separation of church and state. At present the influence of the church is so great that it is often difficult to distinguish between it and the state. I was suprised to be told of a young man who had been refused the right to marry the girl with whom he was in love because she was an Orthodox Catholic. This is merely one example of the injustices that can grow out of such a situation, and the incidents will greatly increase in time. Apparently leaders of the state do not feel that their country is strong enough to undertake a solution to this problem because it would arouse bitter controversy, but someday it must be faced. When it is, I am confident there will be a separation of powers as there is in the United States.

We flew to Karachi, the capital of Pakistan, where I was to be the guest of the All Pakistan Women’s Association, at the invitation of the Begum Liaquat Ali Khan.

Here, as earlier in Israel and later in India, I saw a country not only struggling with the problems that beset any young government but also suffering from the results of the partition that had accompanied the achievement of their long-sought independence. The division of this subcontinent into two independent states, one predominantly Hindu, the other predominantly Moslem, was economically painful to both parts. From the point of view of defense, too, the subcontinent is paying a terrible price for partition. The mountain ranges guarding its northern border made undivided India a single defense system. The Khyber Pass was one of the few breaks through which invasion was possible. But the sword of partition not only divided the land, cutting off crops from markets and factories from raw materials, it also split up everything from debts and revenues to rolling stock and typewriters, including, of course, the army. So today, instead of a single strong united army deployed to meet possible aggression from without, two lesser separate armies must defend the frontiers of the subcontinent. And, instead of facing outward, these two armies now face each other across a line in Kashmir, over which India and Pakistan are at odds.

As in the case of the Israeli-Arab dispute, bitterness and fear of one’s neighbor has resulted in spending for defense huge sums badly needed for health, housing, education, and other programs that would better the living standards of the people.

For Pakistan this division of the subcontinent had an added complication. Not only was Pakistan itself separated from India, but its western portion was separated from its eastern portion by some eight hundred miles of Indian territory. Neither was it a clean cut, for no matter how the partition lines were drawn millions of Hindus and Sikhs still were left in Moslem territory and millions of Moslems in the areas that went to India.

It is against the background of these facts that we Americans must view the problems of Pakistan and India today if we are to understand the conditions that exist there and the importance of intelligent and effective help.

Some of the officials with whom I talked described to me the difficulties of those early days of independence when they were trying to get the government set up. They worked in practically bare buildings. They had no desks, no pencils, no typewriters, no paper, few telephones. They sat on packing boxes, wrote on packing boxes, and occasionally made them into beds at night. There were no files, no statistics. More serious, there was—and still is—a grave lack of the kind of trained personnel without which it is almost impossible to carry on the business of government. A number of the members of the first Cabinet had never before held office. Nor were there bookkeepers or stenographers or clerks.

At the top there were and are, of course, some exceedingly able people who managed to get the government running; and many young people are now being trained intensively in various civil service jobs. Here the Ford Foundation is giving invaluable help, in India as well as in Pakistan.

I had met the Begum Liaquat Ali Khan at a meeting of the General Assembly in Paris and had found her delightful. After the assassination of her husband, which shocked the world, the begum had devoted herself to trying to carry out his plans for his people. It is because of her leadership and the example of the Begum Husain Malik, that the women of Pakistan have begun to free themselves of the restrictions imposed by tradition. The principal instrument through which they are acomplishing their really magnificent work is the All Pakistan Women’s Association, which has set up medical clinics, established educational centers, diffused information about agricultural methods, developed skills and handicrafts.