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Show Eleanor Boosevelt 'GERMANY WITH TEARS' There is a book everybody should read called "Germany With Tears" by Peter F. Wiener. It is a collection col-lection of letters. The first one is written by a student in England, now in the army, writing to his German Ger-man professor at the university. It tells him that his education unfitted him to deal with German people as they actually are and was a purely sentimental and unrealistic approach ap-proach to international relations. The professor pleads guilty and tries to make amends by telling the truth in this series of letters. The appalling things to me are the quotations which go back to the time of Bismarck and Frederick Fred-erick the Great, and have nothing noth-ing to do with Hitler. But it is better to have these things out In the open. All the people of any nation, no matter how they have been conditioned, are never nev-er identical. But if you know what the conditioning has been, you can judge the general results re-sults and prepare yourself for the time that it will take and the methods which will have to be used to develop a new mentality men-tality and new characteristics in Hitler's Germans. LIDICE WILL LIVE In the morning paper one day I read that, not satisfied with wiping out the village of Lidice, the Germans Ger-mans have gone further and killed 34 more people in the cities of Prague and Bruenn "in reprisal." It does not seem to cross their minds that they are imprinting the name of this village on the minds of the people of the world. None of us will ever forget a little village named Lidice. Reprisals of this kind only bring more reprisals, so that it is an unending spiral of murder. How curious is the German mentality, men-tality, that does not realize in giving a dramatic incident of this kind to the world it has stimulated imaginations imagi-nations to the point where, I am sure before long, there will be a play written about this tragic village, there will be a book in which this name will be immortalized. It will appear in current songs. People will paint scenes from memory or imagination. imagi-nation. What the Germans thought to do away with forever, will be remembered the world over and lead perhaps to a better understanding understand-ing of the type of people we will have to deal with when this war is over in Central Europe. UNITED NATIONS HEROES Next morning, the President and I greeted the British and American boys, whom the treasury department depart-ment is sponsoring on a trip around the country. The secretary of the treasury came back from the country coun-try to be with them and the British ambassador 'joined us on the porch. I don't believe they enjoyed the photographing pho-tographing any more than they have enjoyed some of their experiences. However, they must be a great inspiration to some of the people who greet them in different parts of the country. These boys are a symbol sym-bol of the unity which exists between Britain and us in the fight for freedom. free-dom. I hope that, before long, we shall have added to their number boys from China and Russia, because be-cause in this fight no one carries the burden alone. It is a joint burden and will continue to be in the future. Such honors as we pay individual individu-al heroes are really only a symbol sym-bol of what is due to heroio youth throughout the world. We should not only honor the representatives rep-resentatives of the nations which are fighting together today, but also those who represent the other united nations, for they continue to fight in every way which is possible in spite of the occupation of their home territory. terri-tory. As one reads of the many merchant mer-chant ships which have been sunk, I wonder if there should not be some special medal of honor for the men who man these ships. In some cases they run even greater risks than the boys in the regular army and navy. When we realize that, over and over again, they land from one torpedoed ship and as soon as they recover from wounds or exposure, expo-sure, they start out on another trip; we can hardly fail to pay homage for supreme courage. That night we saw a moving picture, pic-ture, "Mrs. Miniver." Because everybody ev-erybody had spoken so highly of it, I was rather prepared for disappointment. dis-appointment. Instead, it is better than I imagined possible a sermon, and a charming and beautiful one. WASHINGTON ORGANIST After lunch one day I went right to the cathedral to hear the young organist, Mr. Paul Calloway, who has been so successful in training a chorus of war workers, in addition to his work at the cathedral. He is a delicate looking young man. Since he has lately been drafted, he will be in the service before long. I only hope that his gift of music will give as much pleasure there as it has to the people of the city of Washington. Washing-ton. He played a very lovely short program from Bach. |