Arthur Murray to Eleanor Roosevelt

19 March 1946 [Edinburgh]

My dear Eleanor,

These are just a few lines—which do not expect or require an answer—to hope that, since your arrival home, you have been able to take some kind of a rest after your very hard, but fruitful work, when you were over here.⁴

You will soon be in the midst of U.N.O. activities again, and no doubt some of the same atmosphere which circulated through the meetings in London, will prevail again! This time, however, the atmosphere will have had some heat added to it by what I, and all my friends over here, consider to be the unnecessarily mischievous tone of certain passages in the speech made by Churchill at Fulton. I think you should be left in no doubt as to the feeling generally expressed by men of all parties in this country that the utterance was one of great unwisdom, and a source of embarrassment, as we know, to Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary; and as we feel, to your Secretary of State.⁵ You know—because I outlined them to you during that evening (to which I look back with so much pleasure) when you dined with me at Carrington House—what my views have been on the subject of Russian imperialistic expansion.⁶ On the other hand, there was one way and one way only to deal with any expansionist sentiments or actions on the part of Russia and that was through and by U.N.O., thus helping U.N.O., in immeasurable degree at the outset of its rough and difficult journey, to gather strength and purpose for its task of solving international differences and quarrels on a peaceful and not a warlike basis. Into this arena with all its difficulties and troubles, plunges, like a bull in a china shop, Winston Churchill. We will leave it at that.

The weather has been bitterly cold since you left but it is now more spring-like.

With every good wish.

                                     Always yours very sincerely,

                                     Arthur Murray

TLS AERP, FDRL