Peace and the world today

Ladies and gentleman, our speaker is here this evening to discuss a matter of growing interest to everyone: peace and the world today.

“We are the one nation that can still think about how an enduring peace may be brought about when the conflict ends,” the woman says in a high contralto voice once compared to that of the good witch Glinda in “The Wizard of Oz.”

“We can think about it in our present breathing space,” she continues. “All the other nations are too busy.”

Was this Hillary Clinton speaking before the U.N. General Assembly? Or a desperate Kosovar refugee pleading for an end to hostilities in her land of devastation?

No, and no. The guest speaker on May 20, 1941, was Eleanor Roosevelt, the 56-year-old “eyes and ears” of her wheelchair-bound husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who never appeared in Bangor. ER’s appearance before an audience of 2,500 at the old auditorium capped a day remembered as the first formal visit of a first lady to the Queen City.

Following a press conference at the Blaine House in Augusta earlier in the day, where she discussed woman’s role in national defense, a tour of the newly constructed Dow Air Force Base in Bangor and a reception at the Bangor House, Mrs. Roosevelt took the stage to do what she did best: speak her mind on her desires for peace, and her worries about war.

Seven months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor fueled America’s entry into World War II, the first lady said no nation can be an entire law unto itself. For an enduring peace, she said, we must work and strive for it. The failed League of Nations, she believed, “… without us was certainly not the organization to bring any kind of world peace.”

“We never came down to fundamentals,” she said. “We never really tried to learn why other nations should have wanted war. … We’ve always thought competition the basic thing. Perhaps we have reached a realization that we must change this to cooperation. At any rate, the time is coming in our history when we have got to cooperate with others if we hope to go on living.”

Sage advice from a visionary who dared the cynics and political vultures to face reality. Unfortunately, her words ring as true today as they did one spring evening 58 years ago.