WOMEN: First Lady

Amidst the confused maneuvers of the Berlin impasse, some 40 members of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Assembly found time one evening last week to give a small party. Held in a suite in Paris’ Hotel Crillon, it was in celebration of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt’s 64th birthday. Mrs. Roosevelt was late.

Mrs. Roosevelt is so busy about so many things that she often has good cause to be late. As chairman of U.N.’s Human Rights Commission, she had been delayed, helping to thrash out a human-rights charter for the world, combining common sense with an air of guilelessness to get agreement where no agreement seemed possible. She brought flights of oratory to earth with such innocent remarks as “I am probably the least learned person around this table, so I have thought of this article in terms of what the ordinary person would understand.” In a two-hour wrangle with Indian and Russian delegates, she insisted that such words as “caste” and “class” were “outgrown.” “We admit caste and class distinctions do exist, but we don’t try to emphasize them,” she declared firmly.

Widow’s Lot. At 64, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt has become, perhaps, the best-known woman in the world. Three years after her husband’s death, she has reversed the usual lot of presidents’ widows by gaining measurably in stature and prestige. She is a unique combination of Citizeness Fix-it and great lady. Today hers is the best-known among the many well-known names at the United Nations. She is the only U.S. delegate who has been named to every Assembly. She has been voted the most popular living American in a magazine poll, proposed as candidate for President and Vice President.

Almost nobody makes bad jokes about her any more, with the exception of the incredible Westbrook Pegler (whose continued toleration is all the proof anyone should need that the U.S. press is free); last week he called her “the Great Gabbo.” When she was in London last spring for the unveiling of her husband’s monument, men respectfully took off their hats as she passed. The London News Chronicle wrote: “She has walked with kings, but never lost the common touch. Immersed in politics, she has never acquired the hard professionalism of the politician.”

“Nobody Is Perfect.” In the Human Rights Commission last week, the Soviets’ Alexei Pavlov launched one of his routine tirades against the U.S., which usually range far afield to cover the atom bomb, lynching, and warmongering. Up rose Eleanor Roosevelt to make a soft but effective answer: “I do not want to make more bad feelings here … I want to try to have us, when we have to say that we do not agree, say it on the idea, and as courteously as we can. [We should] be perfectly honest and frank about our objectives, not attack ourselves more than is necessary, and recognize that nobody in the world is perfect.” It was a modest proposal, and one with which most of the world’s citizens could agree.