VERY BUSY WOMEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 12, 14 July 1939, Page 14

VERY BUSY WOMEN

QUEEN AND MRS. ROOSEVELT

A famous New York hostess and society leader who knows Mrs. Roosevelt intimately and has been presented at, Court and met the Queen many times in England, said recently: "They ] are truly great women. They have | done every job expected of a woman j magnificently. I think they have set! a standard in leadership of women which will be hard to excel." When the Queen evades her entour- j age to walk alone among the crowd or Mrs.' Roosevelt tells the world how she makes scrambled eggs for the .President, you feel that neither is play- •' ing to the gallery. They are startlingly : alike in this sincerity. ! :, When Mrs. Roosevelt first went to ; "White House, Americans raised their : eyebrows at her numerous activities. !- Surely she was just limelighting. They ; didn't like their first lady writing a ' daily newspaper column, they didn't! tliink she should visit slums, go down j , mines, fly in aeroplanes, kiss innumer-' . able babies, debate-on any and every . subject. AN AMERICAN HUSTLER. : Americans love a hustler, but Mrs. I ,- Roosevelt was too much even for them. They thought her activities a pose, but when she went on doing these things ■year after year they sat and gasped. ■ with admiration. They called her "Mrs. j • Everywhere"—rather sarcastically at J first, but later with genuine admira-i tion. Mrs. Roosevelt was getting to know America and Americans^ It was a big place and she took the swiftest means of getting about —plane, express trains, steamships. To get her messages home to millions of housewives she used the radio and newspapers. Her fan mail is enormous and 5,000,000 women read her newspaper article, "My Day." An American magazine the other day called her the world's foremost political force. Her power comes not from her influence on the President, but her influence on public opinion. She speaks for the women of 1939, and what she says today the women of the United States advocate tomorrow.

in one week during the great anxiety over the situation in Europe she proved how fearless she was by condemning Franco in Spain, writing scathingly about Hitler and Goebbels, and lamenting the* lost freedom of the Czechs. In between times she called down a set of social and racial snobs who wanted to debar a negro singer, Marion Anderson, from singing at a national festival. She dealt severely with the people concerned and Invited the singer to White House. _ •