The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (59 page)

The last days of the campaign were really strenuous and I was getting mighty tired of the sound of my own voice. My final appearances were in Washington, where I was on a television program with Senator Margaret Chase Smith at five-thirty in the afternoon and in St. Louis the same evening, where I spoke in Kiel Auditorium. Early the next morning I took a plane back to New York and got to Hyde Park in time to cast my vote, which was the last if not least important thing I could do in behalf of Governor Stevenson.

The returns, of course, were unhappy from my point of view. I felt sad because I am a strong admirer of Governor Stevenson and I believed his abilities were needed to meet the problems that would arise in the next four years. But when it was over, I was glad to be out of politics.

Later my children told me I had tried to do too much. “You’re going to have to slow down,” they warned me. “You’re going to have to stop working one of these days and you certainly should never get involved in another such job of campaigning.”

Thirty-six
    

Bali and Morocco

MOST OF MY
journeys abroad have been in connection with official or semi-official business of some kind, but I have been fortunate in being able to combine work with sightseeing and sometimes I have been able simply to take off on my own for a short time, as I did when I visited the famous island of Bali in 1955.

I had been asked to be a delegate to the World Federation of United Nations Associations, which was meeting that summer in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, and I was happy to accept, partly because it would give me a chance for another look at the Far East en route. I did not feel that I was well acquainted with the problems and people of Indonesia, which was long in the Dutch colonial domain but is now a federation of independent republics. And I had always wanted to see Bali, which I had read so much about and which was usually pictured as the loveliest and most peaceful of the fabled South Sea Islands.

The Dutch, I knew, were not popular in the islands after the war and apparently were becoming still less popular. Yet I had known Queen Juliana for some years and felt that she had worked hard to further a better spiritual understanding among peoples. I should like to tell a little about the Queen, because before I went to Indonesia one of the royal families of Europe I enjoyed visiting was that of Holland. I had always admired the former Queen, Wilhelmina, for her staunch courage and her insistence upon being a good Dutch housewife as well as a capable ruler.

I have a very special feeling about Queen Juliana because, like Princess Marta of Norway, she came a number of times to stay with us at Hyde Park with her husband and children. Franklin was godfather to their third daughter. She and her husband have brought up their children in a democratic way and part of the time they have attended the public schools. Once when two of the children and some small friends were walking home they passed an orchard where they picked up some apples that had fallen outside the fence but which, of course, did not belong to them. The owner called the police and a little later the police telephoned the palace and informed the then Princess Juliana that her children were more or less in custody.

“Very well,” she replied, “you must deal with them just as with the others. Then telephone me again and we will come get them.”

All the children were reprimanded by the police and at least a couple of them received additional punishment at the hands of their parents when they got back to the royal palace.

I was the guest of Juliana before she became queen at the time the University of Utrecht awarded me a degree of doctor of laws. It was a colorful ceremony and at the end of it the princess and I drove in a carriage drawn by four horses, with great pomp and ceremony, to the women’s house of the university. The women were very proud because it was not often that a woman was given a degree, and on this occasion they not only participated in the ceremony but served as outriders accompanying our carriage. The princess was at the students’ house with me, and I look back on that particular incident with great pleasure.

As queen, Juliana has worked vigorously to help develop understanding among Europeans. She has sought with other Continental powers to awaken the peoples of Europe to their responsibilities. Her government has been influential in the Council of Europe and she has led in the humanitarian efforts of her country to help refugees. The pages of history will record that she was a woman who loved her fellow human beings.

So, feeling as I did about the Queen, I decided in 1955 to take advantage of my journey to Bangkok and visit the islands that in past years had been so strongly under Dutch influence.

We spent a week in Japan. The standard of living was still poor when seen through Western eyes, but I felt that conditions were improving since I had been there in 1953 and that the people looked happier. One thing that had distressed me on my first trip was the number of difficult problems that would have to be overcome to establish democratic government firmly in that country. Yet when I returned there after two years I thought that the people were accepting more and more of the important aspects of democracy. They had gradually begun to want to take part and have a say in their government. Of course, the habits and customs developed during centuries of feudalism had not been eliminated overnight, but I thought a great change was taking place in the thinking of the people.

We flew from Japan to Hong Kong and then to Manila and touched down at Jakarta. It was almost dark when we arrived in Bali, and were met by Mrs. Bagoes Oka, the charming wife of an assistant to the governor of the province. The next day we drove to the village of Ubud through country that was green and seemed to have plenty of water. We stopped at a large compound with mud walls. There was an open market at the gate with all kinds of food and handwork on display.

“This is the local rajah’s house,” Mrs. Oka told me. “You will stay here in one of the guest houses.” The rajah was a plump little man in a sacklike gown tied in the middle with a broad sash. For economic reasons, he had converted his compound into a kind of hotel. The guest houses each had one room with mud and wood walls and washing facilities were in a small separate room which one reached by going through an archway. There was little in the way of modern plumbing.

The basic food of the people is rice for every meal, usually with vegetables, but there is a feast about once a week when they eat chicken and pork and make up for the lack of variety in their daily diet. We did not have to eat rice all the time, but I must say that later when I moved to a little Dutch hotel overlooking the water the meals were good and I was so much more comfortable that it seemed like heaven.

By the time we left Bali for Jakarta and Bangkok I felt I had seen enough dancing to last me the rest of my life, but it was the kind of dancing that goes with the island and its people and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit.

The meeting of the World Federation of United Nations Associations in Bangkok was interesting but not particularly newsworthy. We were greeted upon arrival by the prime minister, Field Marshal P. Pibul Songgram, and his wife as well as people from the United States embassy. I found the city unusual and interesting despite the fact that it was the rainy season and sheets of water fell during the afternoons.

Thanks to a hospitable government, a number of us were able to make a trip to see Angkor Wat, the famous temple of the ancient Khmer Empire of Cambodia. We went by plane over a fertile valley where, in the rainy season, there was water everywhere. While still aloft we could see the temples at Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat. I thought they were the most impressive monuments I had ever seen.

There is another journey to a new and developing country which I want to describe before I come to what was to me the most important experience in recent years. But to do it I shall have to switch back to Hyde Park to a time not long after Morocco had achieved its independence from French colonial rule.

One day Archie Roosevelt, one of the State Department’s experts on the Arab world, telephoned and asked if an old friend of his could come to my house for tea. I said I should be delighted, but I was amazed when a huge limousine arrived. A small girl got out, then an American woman, then a Moroccan woman, and finally two Moroccan men carrying a huge box of flowers.

I had not been expecting such a delegation but it turned out that one of the men was the chief adviser to Sultan Mohammed V of Morocco, who later became King Mohammed V. They had come to place flowers on my husband’s grave and I had thought they were just coming for tea. They explained that they had expected to meet two officials from the State Department when they reached Hyde Park, but something had gone wrong and they did not show up until later.

After we had had tea, the adviser to the Sultan arose rather mysteriously and said, “Mrs. Roosevelt, I would like to speak to you alone.”

After the others had left the room, he continued, “We Moroccans never forget a kindness. The Sultan asked me to say to you that he recalls your husband as one foreign head of state who gave him disinterested advice. He wants me to say that he believes there would have been no secret treaty between France and the United States in connection with the establishment of United States air bases in Morocco if your husband had lived. But we do not blame the United States for making the treaty and we will raise no difficulties now in the negotiations on the bases between your government and ours. The Sultan also extends an invitation for you to visit Morocco.”

A few months later some friends of mine in New York told me that a problem had arisen in connection with a large group of Jews in Morocco who wanted to migrate to Israel. They had been granted visas by the French government and were prepared to go but, at the last minute, the Moroccan officials raised various obstacles to their departure.

“The French constabulary has been withdrawn and there is a good deal of Arab hostility toward the Jews,” I was told. “They are now in temporary camps which are crowded and unsanitary and there is fear of an epidemic. We have tried to get something done to bring about their release but with no success and we have not been able to get any word from the Sultan. Do you think you might appeal to him?”

“I will write him a letter,” I said. I wrote it at once, saying that the Jews apparently were in considerable danger and also that there was fear of an epidemic that might endanger everybody in that area. I said I knew that he was interested in all people and I hoped he could do something to relieve the situation. I did not receive any reply to my letter, but not long afterward I learned that the necessary permission for the Jewish group to leave Morocco had been issued and that they had gone to Israel about two weeks after I wrote to the Sultan.

In 1957 the crown prince of Morocco and his sister visited the United States and the crown princess came to call on me. She was accompanied by the wife of the Moroccan ambassador and several other ladies, and by the Moroccan minister to the United Nations. As they were leaving, the princess spoke briefly to the minister and he turned to me.

“My princess says that her father, the Sultan, extends an invitation for you to visit our country.”

Later in the winter of 1957 Dr. Gurewitsch told me that he was planning to take his daughter Grania to North Africa for a vacation, and we decided to go as a party and visit Morocco. My son Elliott and his wife joined us.

The white-robed governor of Casablanca and a representative of the Sultan were at the airport to greet us. With them was Kenneth Pendar, whom Elliott and Dr. Gurewitsch greeted joyfully. Elliott had been in Morocco with the Air Force during the war and was assigned to his father when Franklin and Winston Churchill held their historic conference in Casablanca, so he knew the area well. We spent only a day at Casablanca, before driving to the capital, Rabat.

I was much interested in the country we drove through and in the people. I have never felt that the French were the best colonizers in the world, but, for that matter, no country can give another everything that it needs. The French had left in Morocco good roads and hospitals. Under Marshal Lyautey they had also kept something of the old flavor of the country; instead of permitting ancient Arab towns to be torn down for new buildings, they had seen to it that the new construction was outside the old sections. But the French residents of Morocco had almost a monopoly on power and irrigation and the Arab fields that we drove through were burned up by a severe drought. This naturally did not make the Arabs friendly toward the French colonizers. The Arab schools were poor and the country has a low literacy rate and, as usual, the masses have a very low standard of living. The Moroccans value their independence but the government had had to start almost from scratch and there was much to be done.

Generally speaking, I thought that it was remarkable that the Moroccan people, who for the most part live in great insecurity, had not been lured into Communism.

The Sultan had been in the hospital for an operation but only a couple of days afterward he invited our whole group to the palace. We drove there late in the afternoon and were immediately ushered into the large reception room. Chairs were placed around the room in a semicircle. There were beautiful rugs on the floor. Mohammed V awaited us in a big chair on a raised platform. Despite his recent operation, he rose to greet me and I introduced the other members of our party to him. We were served refreshments as we chatted, and he politely asked the various members of the group about their interests and occupations. After a short time the others left but he asked Elliott and me to remain for a less formal talk.

The Sultan was young and handsome, with a sensitive and kindly face. There was humor in his eyes and his slender hands were expressive as he passed the usual string of beads through his fingers. He wore long white robes, white over some delicate color, and a small cap. His conversation made it clear that he was alert and deeply concerned about the welfare of the people, their need for economic security and for aid in developing social services. But he was also well aware of the international complications affecting the Arab world. From his remarks I felt that he hoped the three North African countries of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria might become a kind of bridge between the East and the West, helping to ease the tensions created by extremist Arab nationalism in such countries as Egypt and Syria and to bring about a better understanding among nations.