This Troubled World.
Roosevelt, Eleanor. This Troubled World. New York: H.C. Kinsey & Company, MCMXXXVIII [1938].
8vo.; offsetting to preliminaries; off-white cloth stamped in blue and gray, darkening at spine; blue, white and red dust-jacket, fraying at edges.
First edition. Inscribed to her brother: Hall dearest with my love E.R. This slim volume (47 pages), an appeal for world peace, is written in a style that is matter-of-fact, personal, and perhaps a bit admonishing:
I can almost count on the fingers of one hand the people whom I think are real pacifists. By that I mean, the people who are really making an effort in their personal lives to bring about an atmosphere which will be conducive to a solution of all our difficulties in a peaceful manner.
The first step towards achieving this end is self-discipline and self-control. The second is a certain amount of imagination which will enable us to understand situations in which other people find themselves. We may learn to be less indignant at any slight or seeming slight, and we may try to find some way by which to remove the cause of the troubles which arise between individuals, if we become disciplined and cultivate our imaginative faculties. Once we achieve a technique by which we control our own emotions, we certainly will be better able to teach young people how to get on together. They may then find some saner way of settling questions under dispute than by merely punching each other’s noses! (p. 21)
Roosevelt was very close with her brother, whom she practically raised herself: their mother died of diphtheria soon after Hall was born, and their father, alcoholic and mentally ill, died two years later. Hall, also an alcoholic, died in 1941 at the age of 50.
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