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Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt today discusses the American image abroad with Venice Brogan Island Cleveland and Santo Rama on prospect of mankind. Recorded Sunday April 10th 160 in cooperation with Brandeis University television and TV and. Eleanor Roosevelt prospect of mankind. A. The American image abroad. Because of the popularity of American films everywhere. This is the way the trial and then the. Violent way out west. And violence in the every day. From movies but I get the impression that we are very rich obsessed with. Even our food is. Preoccupied with material
comfort. And I set it aside. There was a time when America would value. The shot heard around the world. Propaganda worked hard to create a negative. Role for the hated symbol of exploitation. Our industrial system. Our cultural value and mediocre. Our raw mongering missile waving people. The present sides of American right our equalitarian society our energy and clearing slums and rebuilding cities that created by power they are our people. Today Mrs. Roosevelt and her guests discuss how America looks to the rest of the world and what can be done to improve our prestige abroad. Our guest Dennis Brogan leading British authority on America the Ramah role Indian writer of the dramatization of a passage to India is currently reaping phrases in
England that day that managing editor of The Christian Science Monitor and Harlan Cleveland dean of the Maxwell graduate school of citizenship and Public Affairs Syracuse University now here is Mrs. Roosevelt. Now that I would be in the United Nations and traveling abroad to go I think I'm the one that ended at the United States that friends family no I felt that we would not be seen as a little brat I think the prize caught in the open. All the cards are in for them and for them which we reported earlier over the willows. You know I know you're in fashion then they were pretty good profit growth of a comic and. I think that today we may hope that the Emmy
and I would like to hear from you profess but broken. If you're in a room I think it would do both of over the other. People you know I don't care about either of them are we going to get atomic road in general what is the medical. When the coffee is good we can give you good thing. Also it was more belief that McCarthyism is on the federate but it happens. KLEIN I think these are both true and then also I mean the image I think was always from when you suggest that many people thought of the ticket but said nice rock and invented a great many people also put up with the music and met European amusement from it came from the message only I would change that is that there's an expectation thing that West Side Story about the use of some of the jokes about the next version of the comedy. Now that I think the image has a great game proved and that you're hungry but I think it's
basically the I think American broth at its rush I think the Russian dolefully across America in 53 at the four walls of that. This is almost as a shock you know after seeing those pictures that we've just seen which is pretty much on the grim side as this change come as a result of anything that we've done or is it that as a result of the things that took place my life beyond arc and for what I'm going to do things felt to throw me a good judge of another being in the Gang of Five a lot of the rioting in Paris especially in Stockholm. So those are suffocating in a lot of the same vote in the way it's almost a kind of a civilization of yours will probably will have to do with another was also a lot of other people probably even for TV Sure enough the TV movie sure but at least the Vatican It's rather astonishing that side of it though that if I'd been sitting in the tail of the site when I worked at the Fed minutes in the event that listening to that show and telling me I did it would be a cross examining all the data that five of them over the years and I don't really look at any picture of America good or bad it were just the fascination
and silence in the family that they really thought they had filed and I'm going to ask about the question I want to I want to profess and rather than whether we don't whether we have now come into a period where the danger is that we'll take this image of American business from Syria or word from we're now so preoccupied we're taking ourselves so seriously are so worried about every little thing that that amount of around the world. We haven't learned a lesson which I get the British learned quite a long time ago that our unpopularity don't really hold hands very gently and easily and that from the purpose of the exercise anyway in our foreign policy is not always to be. Loved by everybody and there are other objectives through that are of equal importance. Perhaps what we're up to remember the person who is more involved in the PAP. What have I this is this is the thing is this wonderful international story that's what I heard the latest in them in
Calcutta from around about the rich Bengali who is a friend of his really hates him and he said. I don't understand why that man should hate me. I've I've never helped him in my life. I'm well aware that we're helping 60 some other countries at the moment and according to Paul Hoffman the number is shortly going to be 100. And we can expect to be universally loved right. I think what we want is knowledge. I don't think that any of us here probably would want it would want to censor it but can go abroad in this country I don't believe we could possibly censor what comes out of the moving pictures but it goes out through the dispatches of the foreign correspondents and so forth. We would rather have them know us there as we are with their sons I'm not sure that we'd want to censor some of the things that our sensors would answer. For example the problem of a cowboy I picture now if there is one universal cultural phenomenon the world surely it is that the universal appeal of the
American West. Maybe that's the only form of Western is in that is really exploitable. I don't know. And I think probably you better not use it. I mean it was not it is a phenomenon it's perfectly true every cop. I love my students in Cambridge if I loued through other way of doing that then don't know who it will be met. When I was growing up in the back lands of Southeast Asia there was a a man by the name of Dr. Wilkins who came from Texas and he was an expert on cattle and he'd been sent over there by the American point force system to try to show the Thais how they could change a very very poor area which produced absolutely nothing in a good cattle country and he was making cow probes out of these young guys and they just loved it. There wasn't anything that man could do or say that wasn't absolutely perfect so far as they were concerned he was the best ambassador we ever had in Thailand and really you know of course he will go much too far with us from this
kind of business was a case just recently in India where a man thought he could make that energy for all the villages of India by just having a special gadget. Attached to one of those threshing machines where the bullocks go around and around. But he tested it unfortunately with some Texas here. But show him the global price of fast food the Indian vote and the thing to work on they when they set it up in India sometimes this transplantation doesn't work too well of the ridiculous things that go wrong has there been any improvement in India do you think in this in the general approach toward American policy in this. Them I think that people are doing it. There's a lot of practical things even if they don't work. Problem do you really get a great deal of acceptance and appreciation and all that. And for our encounters with they go through that and I think the thing that we all forget that I am respected around is trying to
project something rather more than just an image of America. It has got to be first of all a two way thing. Americans want to understand chronic on face and from countries beyond that understand America. And this it seems to me is an absolutely knew at least since the last war a new approach to broad set of foreign policy at all and and I think the question of an ending is a great deal more complicated and it's very very deeply linked up with the image that you present of yourselves or the image of a foreign country review process because when you are talking in terms about spending another country you need to bring a completely different sort of equipment to it. From the equipment that you need if you are simply going to help them. Among them is if you're going to colonize them or if it's not you can arm again or any of the recent of the runners that haven't. I wonder whether part of our difficulty though as we find ourselves spread
all over the world one percent of our population now is abroad and living and working. I wonder whether we don't one of our problems isn't that we are but we think it's reciprocal. That is to say that that we think that other people ought to make a great an effort to understand us as we should make understanding them. And last time I was in Indonesia. I had a chance to talk to a doctor some boundry I was a foreign minister of it and he said something I thought very rise he said. People will expect the Americans to make a great effort to understand them without themselves making a great effort to understand the American. But then he shrugged his shoulders with a sort of an oriental rug at them. But you people shouldn't worry about it so much this is the price of power. The things I mean there's there's real wisdom in that I think rather than do you think that well I've got to shoot with those but first of all to go back put it right with the people. One difference of feeling. One trouble about the medical ethics of that sort of understanding it is through
as not only wanted to be loved but we want them to be they also see the road outside of the web it will be even bigger medical and there for those who believe it or not approach the social with a passionate conviction that bigger something to think about getting the flu and it will be could be English and also because it was brought up so decided in the archive. But other people are taking this for the British people have died to footage but surely that made them a bit angry but they made a few really expect these are not true and if you get what I think is a very dangerous what are the medics that have known of that other medical A lot of abuse people shouldn't be and should it be a litigant but another medical to look for but I know the medical but not for that I think I think this is our problem that we've been so successful at at getting along with everybody in the world as they came to our shores and got into the melting pot. There was only one condition on getting on with them that was what they wanted to be american out when we start now going to Europe and other places where there are people who decided not
to come to America and it was very much more difficult. I'd like to take issue with with with a broad point that you're making there though at least for a moment the British after that took power and the responsibilities of power in their stride and as we are fond of saying they didn't pay too much attention about wanting to be loved. I can remember being in Spain down in the south of Spain in one of the small mining communities it was Rio Tinto actually. It was a British owned mine of course operated by Spaniards and an English woman who had been staying living with Spaniards in the town took me up on the top of this roughly hailed through a great gate with huge iron swinging gates which were for security reasons gods with guns on both sides and suddenly we left the squalor of this little mining town and we were in this beautiful little English compound where everything was lawns with water flowing and beautiful trees and all the rest of it. And I'll never forget what that English woman who lived with the Spaniards said to me as we walked back down the hill again
she said. Why not. My people understand that if they don't take that wall down it will be broken down. I'm not so sure that it's a bad thing to want to be love. These Americans are swarming around the world after their curious fashion these days and behaving pretty much like themselves and trying to many of them at least trying to get along with with with people isn't that that's a good idea to overdo the description of the extent to which they're am. Trying to get along with trying to get along I mean let's look at the scene we have that we have from. What. We have our little America has which are not perhaps quite as affluent are at least affluent in a different sense. That is bowling alleys rather than beautiful trees. Perhaps the SNP acts when he acts and I know that we in many ways we advocate living. In isolation and I think there's not on for the whole. Even when we asked for a cry and a rave from the native community so they come out today.
I live as a native We had great American poet when we grew up. But the records that within the Luther the upper 5 verses was but left school issued after year so that it was a bit too. Yeah who voted. If we brought in the riders who would through the rock and he left the field and we had much less of a pro thought rebel fighting force with the road riders with we'll hear about a pretty big umbrella she I'm sure. When I hear you all about the language barrier was I going to be forever is a very angry crowd and when you add to a language barrier the economic barriers and is read about when you when everybody in say Indonesia or India or any Asian country is seen. People in these sort of American compounds living in ways that they come to live themselves. And and with all sorts of you know refrigerators stoves and all kinds of things and they are often they have and feeling that they don't know how to live in this country without these accessories to add to
that living. When you sort of the role of image you say has got to be broken down sooner or later get not everybody there is something but I think you can press whenever you have a great occasion. And I just happen to think that today I mean my granddaughter that. I've had a friend from a pretty girl. She had she taken Aryan as just another girl who had to work for a living and a would live the way we did for all the many of our young people in this country do all their own way and so she had a bad that day with her and she did all the work and the power to spread with there was allowed to join in. It stopped in row with us and found that living in a relation the problem for us and she said to me look at the group or look at it and I don't know how they have been living now it's a little different but you're thinking of your
thinking I'm really poor I'm looking for a really a predator on the run then yes well I'm thinking of the majority myth and yes that which is which is if the truth anyway and any shit I mean is simply that is that that very thing the cream on top was so sad it would have contraception and so on but when you can fit the population in the and the and the average income of endeavor have negligible practical. And I know that and the same thing is to be missed and I think we ought to look. Thank you so much. I think you ought to look deeper. Here's what I think I look deeper into the into the nature of some of the problems that incidentally confront women let's say especially also out in Asia. An American woman for example finds herself in some capital city or perhaps not even the capital city it seems to the wife of an American consul or a point or a person and she has a very real problem on her hands with her
children's schooling which isn't easy for her. She has a very sizable problem on how to try and make this American household. But she has brought with her in crates and so forth operate in a country like this where people are toasters are they all the electric current turns out to be the wrong kind of current. And I've seen a great many American girls go sour under circumstances like that and and start grousing and wondering when they can be sent to Paris instead of left in the show you guys see I caught between to ravish shock that I've had a cough because it keeps me going to get. I think when it comes to things without the people from political rather than Goodness me if I come to this country and if I were suddenly to insist that because I am an Indian I'm respectful or we sit on the floor because we always sit on the floor and I miss meat eating all my food with my fingers because in India we always do. And if you come to dinner at my house you take your shoes off at the door and you sit on the floor and you eat with your fingers. You would say you know probably
think I was mad or you would run to the right in the road I had come to America because surely if I had come yet it would be at least to take some time to prod in rough America with a bath and learn a little about this country and yet those same Americans that would consider me crazy for doing that. Do advantage do the same thing in my country there rive feeling that it is perfectly alright for them to insist on their second dish and house in the icebox and the right knives and forks in the p x and you know iceberg lettuce with French dressing or whatever is the correct thing in there. And this they consider to fit me. What do you do to be in Cleveland you're concerned with training people for your jobs abroad of various kinds we're going to explain all these things in advance so they can understand it and I'm not sure that the differences are as much as they need they don't need to be as much as they tend to form. I don't know if you saw that wonderful cartoon of the two fellows two American soldiers sitting on the floor together watching
TV and on the TV screen as a Japanese family sitting on the floor eating his dinner and two children eating their TV dinners. One of them is saying to the other Iraq how about that in Japan they said on the floor to eat. Actually I think it's to see how how we can. How we can perceive in our own culture those things that are similar. The other and there a great many of that on that and find find our bridges that way to perceive the grace and cleanliness of eating with the one hand we think of eating with hands as you know dog dinner at the age of three with both hands. NOT LIKE THIS far as you can raise are coming back at me like the only thing worse than voting issues with you know if I have the more knives at the board meeting would we have been different from what I'm
going to commit like to do long life the thought of along with the company with a future with them. As you know throughout even although you can use it also to eat with me that you don't think that America would see that in the way most of Asia and most of Africa has already been indoctrinated to some extent by the leg of this and that to Europe into West and raise a behave as though in a sense they have a far more easy than than the Asians have it. When I travel in the AM and instead of sort of complaining about the vast advantage that they already have but they ought to be grateful for that and try to bend a little about the country in which restoration. This of course is precisely the difficulty. As you go through Asia and Italy in your part of the world. Be one of the effects of British power which preceded ours. Is that at a lot of people know English. And consequently it's relatively easy to get
around without money and have been lying and burnt. There is therefore a kind of general disincentive to learn anything but English. Whereas the fact that a person has learned English and are going back at a Japanese for example and learn English in order to deal with people even if it doesn't mean at all that you can probe how you think by talking with them only in English and this is the part of the problem of of this understanding drove across thinking it off of the cultural barrier. Well I think runabout trouble very often is that we don't know enough about our own come pray before we go to foreign countries so that we can really be better off in a real job but we like I would for everybody in the beginning if I was this young woman that I remember and maybe have it. Beth Britain are running a little late in between in our state the national government
valued my husband. I think I'm going to run but I couldn't the bounce of the press there. I mean I think there are many things which show up but surely we could make things Bill much better if we knew what would happen. Burial in our own country if we could say I once heard someone say it but you have no Abbott that I can not read or write it out of play is rather pay anyway. But it's bad in the days of our depression that I throw people in the coal mining areas. I've badly as any poor people any bread and it happened in India in a way I believe to have been had. No wonder I don't know it but if we didn't get mad and I would run a bad mine are thinking at the middle had to have been a threat. You would never seen anything like that and I believe in
my own mind and body in the face with the press. Read it and have one great thing about it was it with a parity between it right away from the time the role of a guy if you can find something for your Bronx up 20 years for you both. Yes if you can vote. Up front sometimes that's more of an understanding and research but I also feel very strongly that vet run of the things that all of us have learned what Americans think you know because the burden of them not on the bed and who wouldn't runs thoughts Well I mean I think with that run of the show the phrase To win win for favorite with another person is a running they are there in him in the room drawing some question about Little Rock about the Negro problem and so on. Is this a victory for food but if that's so I mean not just the pride and the gloss it over to try and put it in good fortune when America set it red but not to pretend it doesn't exist and not to get angry with the press and let us
know when I don't have the problem here is that there is a tendency for our. Now that politics is as it is in so much international politics and our minds so much for our. Whenever an American and an Indian get together they feel somehow they have to settle all the outstanding foreign policy issues before they get here and and you know it doesn't necessarily have to be they can still be friends and their governments disagreeing in the United Nations without the slightest difficulty. But it's hard for people to understand that when they first go abroad. Yes I think I ran across an interesting example in this same area out in India I found of course one of the first things that would always come up was the charge against the United States that basically we were militarized and belligerent and we were standing on the new strength of our arms and that our foreign policy was muscular and that we weren't paying proper attention to. The things that we should be paying attention to which is big the growth of people and individuals and their place in the sun
around the world. And I found that one of the easiest ways at least for me to try to help explain what American policy was this goes back to your point Mrs. Roosevelt about knowing a little bit more about what is happening back at home so you can help other people understand was to explain how the American people learn this very simple elemental lesson from Hitler that you cannot let yourself get pushed back and back and back in Manchuria or in Ethiopia in Spain. And to let an aggressor come on step by step and to do nothing about it because ultimately you'll have to challenge him and that will be the road to world war and that the American people having made that simple decision now are going to try to do it in other a different way the next time and try to say no you can't do this. WE WILL WE WILL WE WILL stop you if you do this. And the moment one brought up that analogy to Hitler I found the Indians very often would say yes I do understand that point I can see that. Is that a point was always thought that a lot of the special last few years
for political reasons if American government is abandoning that invest the pride of the military as well as policies which have quite grown. We should move to grab that I've put it on the ground and lay out the road of sin and this and that authors bend deliberately to get money for other purposes but the problem that for the average piece of American aid over the last four or five years with even the farm family that we did probably in the form the military aid as it was a write off of what was really good was also economic aid but the guys with enough things to put it through Brotherhood from this river whose eye but emerged out of them which straight from the husband put straight and brought the average. Look at the Radisson in Asia sees often sees is some political issue in his own country which is about we would receive more or less Thank you won't receive any aid we won't have warheads. And it seems to me that the American people at least I think this is true it would have been people would have responded better for street problems people who have an interest in
a duty to help these people. With a limited view of what you were saying didn't really a criticism. Leadership the call are meant to be mean. Thanks I think of being brave. This includes leaders who are already with areas close to the ground and who are always a little afraid that the people won't vote for them every community as they have been broken and I think in a way they have been a great tool for me but for they have felt aroused. Good thing we know we can get it done. So here's what we're doing there in opposition to come and therefore we say military aid is an opposition company and will do the other economic aid. We read much about it because we might begin to think we were
doing a little too much but anything we do in opposition to communism and nobody has ever had the courage to explain to the American people are very simply that they do just not in opposition to communism. When they do you do when you have economic build up so that the country grows stronger and it's much less apt to go in becoming a but that is being a parent. I'm thinking but never a good term and I think that's why we have a problem bound. But we have not that bad a cause don't you agree that being fired but rather the result here is a virtue with all of this on your favorite voter group an average man whose only notion of a medical problem is thankful to have you with him because you know that it was a bottle with a note pad about it one way or the other but and medical approach of Neo's in the fall will probably haven't been met the latest like a bit much in the Peten nothing about a brothel
that he knows nothing about other than what the medical problems were both and when you're him and in countries which us it was with a lot of people in the theater shooting with nor the need for the north of that were that much and better to do that in place for a specific road that we'd need to know this probably would have brought before the court with medical stuff about what I think are the numbers I think this is the problem is it. It's probably what we talk about. I've had the feeling I should try this out on you in front of a historian Professor program event. Maybe one of the one of the staff papers in Moscow that went into launching the Korean war on. Back 10 years about. Might have said something like Look this is getting pretty dangerous as Marshall Plan and point forth that this is too popular around the world and and it's it's giving the American people too much of a of a bang getting their morale up after the war and to construct a way we better do something about it what can we possibly do about it. Well obviously what we can do about it is to get them jawed
Often it. Comes from the line of policy and of thinking only about something called mutual security. Military aid and so they started the Korean War and sure enough right. Thank God I was 10 years I'm only really beginning now to come out of that theory. I think the medicos underestimate the fish but I think you're right. He's even if it were all that we had with it was for example a bit of couse about that but for that effect I bet that when we buy them either the credit for the boot of the IDF up the arc of the problem the spreadsheet firmed up in the face with a lot of this was that have you seen with a passer by with this credit crisis or the budget and with that. I think that deep in this problem of the military position around the world there are some very real problems as well as the ones that we talk about. Take this one for example which I think mystically been you probably have run into in Vietnam where the situation currently is quite unstable and in going through another
unhappy phase we decided that we had to help them afford a series of on the divisions which their economy was unable to support. So we gave them a kind of foreign aid which too many Americans have thought was economic aid actually it was really a form of military support simply because of the fact that the soldiers in Vietnam can't use American dollars they have to have the local currency the local piastres. So we had because of the economics of the situation we had to sell American goods inside South Vietnam. In order to try to produce the piastres which could we could then give to the Vietnamese government to serve for the salaries for these soldiers and that meant that we were I to officially pumping goods in there and dumping them on the market and the market consisted of the speculators and the people who had quick money ready to grab a good deal with and they wanted expensive automobiles and the
result was that we were creating a kind of economic and social corruption and the result of this which is very deep and I think for the benefit of all the photos from that recent one my wife and I probably would be on the credit card with a medical for the profit for the rest of the crowd with a bit of a go to build over the course will slip for the bare and through past the side are great but we would do well with his friend of the beleaguered road for you to report the proposal for the whole world that will probably move with little hope or your regard for the full report because of the religion mother thing rushing for in front of him from the front of it and you know the pope wrong but he couldn't think and get at that meet with this event was of the Vatican have a big portion of that article. We've got quite a run of the mess that we're going to put up with this with but I think also we assume that it is much easier for the Russians and cash aid
in political terms and it is for us. Actually I think it's possible to chart with the Russians and run through the same series of mistakes that we ran through in our foreign aid program about four or five years later we have a probability is that catch up in that respect as a missile. But. There's no indication so far they've put most of their aid into Yugoslavia Egypt and India and they're not doing very well in any of them but it's not a group thinking you did it in front is afraid of the wrath of the car the propaganda value would not be at least that if it is true to the Indian that the Americans would be of the. Age of the president that they have about that attack. And and because. Would you be afraid of my father down the value of a new red door if you fail.
Whatever it is that those of the great putting up with of the great illusion of the purpose of aid is granted. You would rather the result with asked me whether India is wedded whether even what the United States would like to see. India isn't going to be helped by contributions to the Indian economy from the Soviet Union. Well I think that question is. Yeah I mean I don't really know yet but I think we should welcome them. Then it's not that good for it. Good because I'm pretty sure. But they were not offered to it. I met with them family or play with both of them and whether it isn't a propaganda you are or whether it is in that you know them you know. It certainly is of use to us and we can use every bit of help. But at the moment but anyone can put up her hand and you feel and I would really run run big name in the could not be together. For them I would be trying to do the same thing on the contrary they should be feeding the baby. I think we should. We should earn up a minute and ask whether they are really trying to do the same
thing. I think of interesting comparing their kind of aid with our kind that most of our economic and I think all of that is afterall. We do that the objective of economic growth one way or another. I think amounts for both that. The Russians are still in what we used to call the monument. As they want to build great big thing for Rangoon ports be a steel mill in India. The awesome band and great big things are given for the great big brown and say look look what we did in the desert. Right Thing about the mandate. Well I think that'll be about as. Useful in the long run. Some of these monuments of course made him stronger as a man do you think that the India every female that anybody can write here is rich in relations and
because of the way we him not because not because of any. Not because the ass van Dam was necessarily the highest priority and it's an economic problem maybe not but even if the government can get something right for priority I wonder what the vet appointment for a medical medical group but it would probably require we got all that for that right all right. You need a good food with a bit of good rush with mood. That brought a lot to do here for that old man with a problem with any of the medical and you can read them and you get a medical problem but the front runner in the middle of a rather pretty leg with the very middle of a group of them voted with other to put them in the throat with a proper from a friend who we could go through the food for the
wonderful wonderful thing for the people but one of the things that were so important of a million dollars from the ground for a French person with brotherhood of approach were from right around with us from the birth of Britain in the equipment with the preferable but without the proclivity for that yet. Thanks for proving that even if we could but the big with the program of which. Were about the brown that I had from the roof with her.
I don't believe that black men think now from day thank you for the river you the world. I remember a rainbow when they were beginning to put in a book. You are but one of our lives but they were making it from film and equipment. I think right. Now we cry from the top. We. Have gone from the one from the cross when you're driving and the crackdown has no back and I think I would probably that lack of understanding that we talk about we don't cry yet. That was really a rant with me in Atlanta. And Ken do you have a list of robot that are better for the group but probably a little bit on the medical. We'll put it on the level we would have a robust wrote about it the way
we look at the flow through that little tidbit a little bit. We had a problem on the other side too when I'm with the government that we're working with not the Indian government because the Indian government knows what it's doing it canonically and it's going into its third five year plan and it has the whole situation well organized in its growth rate is coming economic growth rate is coming along nicely. But that would be memories of your hospital in Chile. Mrs. Roosevelt I remember the first day arriving in Phnom Penh in Cambodia. The American ambassador was out of the big ceremony with the king dedicating another hospital as it happened which we had been equipping along with the French and helping to build and we ran into a little man in you Nesco whose business was working with villages who refused to go to the ceremony and he also turned down into taking from the king to go to a party after the hospital was dedicated because he said I know what the village in this country needs they need little medical kits that can be taken around to the villages that NO NO one of my village people could
ever get into that hospital. And he said that it was in the villages where the work needed to be done with my point here simply is that in this case it was the Cambodian government which was interested in building this big flamboyant hospital. And it's not easy for us when we say that we can't mix in other people's affairs and meddle in their internal decisions and so for us to see countries other than India which don't really know what economic growth he is wasting a great many wasting efforts in various directions. This is really rise say that the Russians will get over the monument craze just the way we did in the Chilean case the same amount of resources put into a network of rural health clinics would have gotten a lot harder in the long run. I think that there is some danger in putting too much of the emphasis on the technical on the steel pounds out of the wood and then all the rest of it because an important part of the problem.
Perhaps the most important limiting factor I think I would on today in this business of technical assistance and economic development is the building of institutions of human social institutions. I'm struck by the fact you say the Indian sign is going along well and it is relatively going on pretty well relative to most of the other Asian countries. But it's interesting that in both India and back in the West the United States in particular and been much more successful at exploiting. But we don't have and what we do we've been very successful at exploiting the. Central economic planning which we wouldn't have on a platter in our own country. My good and very unsuccessful at exporting the thing that we probably do have as a nation which is the administrative ability to get on with the the ability to make something happen on a very large scale. And here you have an agricultural
land which has been in existence for now. Now they're in the third five year plan in India. They're still only beginning to experiment with the problem of how to get that from the minister down to the village and MINISTER This is the limiting factor and the difficult things the team that the administration would like to keep things sit and cry and sob community and create instead of nothing. I think there are many countries in but we would call over nearly a third of the car linearly even a really bad I think there a country is in that area where if there was the same kind of community responsibility in the little group at the top that there would be in a pretty small city in our country and the little girl for the truth to fade you see and the functioning of the home today. You would be getting along much better because they would be stopping things and moving them along and they would be going. But that little group at the top in these countries had
never thought of my own family my own in my own thought and their rights. Mine was from birth it seems that those are good. So in that but not a good or something that will benefit the community. See this is a new ride idea. We are less good but getting across the idea of that comes I think partly because we don't recognize that these are ideas that need to be the same head. We can understand that very well in our own society. Right now we have metropolitan areas growing up all over the place and most of the little groups of community leaders are thinking in terms of their own village or city or town or whatever it is and not a boat and not getting on with the problem of Metropolitan. Meeting the Metropolitan promises of a somewhat analogous case anybody very few people would approach the rest of my attitude with let's rush through the school and all the other cars were very poor very backward with her but
it worked for that if it was a problem. WOMAN Yeah what it needs were that whatever the government that fought for with the driver of the brotherhood of every little country wants a steel mill to a country which one can look for and imagine that we are on that comic or the public variable road but on the other the other fear that little bug repellent of a lot of other apropos McLean the fucking you saying about the villages it's very interesting that within the last few days we've just gotten word from Delhi that they have instituted an entirely new system in the village development program by which they are prepping to transfer power to the bottom and have it work out from the bottom. They're actually having the community development system controlled now by groups of people who begin with the Panchayat the local that the local leaders in the villages and work their way up instead of having it handed down somewhat similar. And is he also in Pakistan in the development of the so-called basic democracy in
fact it really does something to your cliches to see a military dictatorship declaring martial law for the purpose of introducing basic democracy at the village level twists to their height of power that is there in making money to buy from who will believe it. But with a bow. They've about it on the windshield. I've added the hypothetical but rather must be employed to do it would rather make them imitate your thumb that they were recorded without giving the money it would have been this with a better method of e else other than this of the Ravens only but certainly couldn't live with the wrath of the Muslim Brotherhood was with them but let's not carry that analogy to 5 opposed to the one thing about the history of the Army Corps of Engineers in this country it is that it hasn't been particularly interested in the building of the social institution that go along with it. Very good indeed and knowing the man we talked for a few minutes now about the ugly American
problem. I see that it's been on the bestseller list now for seventy seven weeks in the United States and obviously a great many people are interested in this problem of how Americans are behaving abroad. We've been working quite a bit to Cleveland. How does it how does it strike you do you think that the brute the ugly American accurately represents the nature of the American problem in these countries. I don't really think it does. I think it's it has touched a chord AG and. I think that's right and I think it has in some sense to dramatize a concern that a lot of people had before. For when as many people as we have abroad almost everybody has a sister or a cousin or an aunt who've been involved abroad for the love of our will bring them back in to run the smaller area want to grow up. Iraq has failed to make them get across. Well I think that's right. But the thing that appalled me about the book is not what some see as the problem most people most people are worried about the villain in this book or bothers me about the book are its heroes.
Yes and they are they are to a man of the wrong kind of people. Every one of them is the narrow hobby horse riding specialist who thinks that you know you're really going to solve the whole problem of Southeast Asia without a problem. That's right yes. And then and then when they run into those nasty bureaucratic generals Foreign Service about the song obviously they're very bad people in the book out there. They have the reaction that all experts and specialists have done when they're asked to be cordoning that is to say they punch their colleagues in the nose or they go home to tell it to Congress. Now we are not going to be saved by such as the villain for one. Went out and did that to sort of the green that could be the thing to have evolved with the gauntlet of speaking with a broader language you know I mean certainly it is an advantage but it certainly isn't that good for anything with her I mean that is the growth of focus and that's a fact about the
baby with you 27 languages and couldn't find there in any of that in fact the person you don't know whether you can see revenues or not. And the understanding of it or the Goodwill or the ability to be understood even if it's something that comes from the heart it really doesn't come from the skills and the techniques that you're not me to pick up. Rather they are linguistical bombing or indeed anything else and that it will be our fellow Yes. Do they suggest that that have something to do with it that has them not to do with it that would have been you know not a complete except there's a broken with the truth and saved by Bhishma leave a hundred years ago that it crossed in English we speak French but election and I assume Professor brother you know about that. You knew that being language is English the bat you've heard of. About it ever we get to add a little something just being ourselves
what troubles me about the the problem that isn't written up in the ugly American is the large number of Americans who are just the most decent people back home who are basically equalitarian in their instincts who get along well with people and who you'd say would be just the right ones to send out to someplace like Southeast Asia and you take them and you send them over there and they suddenly find themselves up against a whole series of fascinating problems personal and social and diplomatic and all the rest of it which they've never faced before and unless one looks out or unless we find a better way of handling the situation that's what I want to ask you about mystically and how we could handle it better. You suddenly find that these people have become arrogant and contemptuous of the local people and that they are mouthing cliches which they hardly even understand. And this this to my mind is a very real problem what can we do about it. Again Cleveland don't think that might be an elementary information book but even taught it might have but I don't have that.
Well I think that it does get more complicated than that because I'm there I get that there are the elements of a curiosity about the other fellow's way of thinking. That's the restraint not to believe that it's bad just because. Not your way of thinking. There is the element of the sense of Apollo and the. The ability to think of yourself as a factor in somebody else's power structure. But I've been waiting for this talent for building institutions as one of building down the company and there is perhaps the most important element of I'll be the one we were talking about before the understanding of our own society. This this this feeling that. So many Americans abroad do not have of glorying in our in our confusion. You know where I live. So often somebody wants from you know write our little book saying just what America is to be given to everybody. Around the
essence of American democracy is that it isn't anybody's business but tell us what part of the right it is. But what's fun about it. That's what's fun about being a man you know and run over trying to sort of add on to it through everything would you say which I agree with. Is that I don't think that we really must be so much about times I mean you talk about the the well adjusted model and the right way is not necessarily a hero I mean he is not necessarily the best person to send abroad it may very well be that we revel in the end of the adventure and someone who is prepared to accept it through other things and extraordinary conditions and possibly looks for change and add new conditions under which diverts me right that it will be the sort of person to send abroad but because the local image of the correct person is that creature that they're always trying to make our children into either well-adjusted to a group of creatures you know that is just because that is the level in which a reason
for getting back on top of this is absolutely right that there are many recruiting officers. Who will tell you we never take anybody who was a skater you know maybe just maybe this is just the other side of the coin of a sense of adventure. Yes and when you think in the autumn and the joy it happens and you know. The people that have told us not to also come back to something you were saying a few moments ago misnomer out as a as an oversimplification that its character really that counts. Grab you'll find an American who has a genuine interest in other people and who respects people and who is able to carry his sense of equalitarian ism along with him and who tries to make an effort to listen to what they have to say. They can contribute to to our civilization as well as the other way around. Whenever you find that kind of American wandering around goodness knows where doing whether it's a diplomatic job or anything else whether he knows the language or whether he doesn't whether he lives in the compound or whether he doesn't. He will find ways of getting across to you that morality is enough of a milieu that it was a writing
about right. Writes You and I have an image abroad as a part of it now but nothing that you know from a broken like you think. But I agree with the rear about the US government with all but a young man of a very good school family and so on Boston was a candidate for the father's service for you to go. They went to one of his coaching schools with them but the man said it was for most of them to write in examinations to get both sides of it fresh. I think there is an unknown but I think there's a lot of truth in that business. This is really what we mean by being myself again. We're not going into a new phase in international relations now perhaps a somewhat more mature one than the frantic propaganda of things that we had earlier where people are getting to understand each other's faults as well as their virtues and their quirks and so forth. And we're not going to have to think in terms of conformity and propaganda so much. I'm sorry but I have to bring really interesting with that
crowd who were all been so good with the gravy ride ride ride at night and buy tools had been broken out on. Thank you so much about me and I want you to Miss Radnor out those are the good of your the problem with both of them with this point of view. But none of the rest of those could really have been Iraq. Thank you also. The problem because we didn't at all but it's been great pleasure to have you and I know a great deal and so now we come to the end of the day and I ran to tell you that next time I hope you will be with us. We will discuss. China and the relationship. Who were some that come from. I think it will be very interesting and run you know what we should know with radio about. A.
Golden is a professor of political science from Cambridge University England. In Cleveland and the author of the coming book the overseas American. Based primer I was an Indian playwright and novelist whose latest book is My Russian Journey. Mr. Davis is managing editor of The Christian Science Monitor. Films of the prospects of mankind programs are available for school and discussion group you will meet that Indiana University Bloomington Indiana. Photograph courtesy of national screen service operation Richard e-book no company aircraft company private university and the Rhode Island School of Design. Jazz be incredibly of Nat King Cole. The topic for the next move is Eleanor Roosevelt aspects of mankind program will be in the making for the summit meeting. His National Educational Television.
Series
Prospects of Mankind with Eleanor Roosevelt
Episode Number
107
Episode
The American Image Abroad
Producing Organization
WGBH Educational Foundation
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
Library of Congress (Washington, District of Columbia)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-17crjp1w
NOLA Code
PSOM
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Description
Episode Description
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and four guests on the National Educational Television program, "Prospects of Mankind," agreed that the American image abroad is improving but warned that constant effort must be made to correct the picture sketched daily by Soviet propaganda. Roosevelt claimed that a combination of McCarthyism, exaggerated reporting of race incidents, and the threat of American atomic power in any war brought about a low point in American esteem. Denis Brogan, professor of political science at Cambridge University, added, "American in 1953 and 1954 was in a pathological state, but I agree that the image has improved. However, I live near a great American Air Force base and the degree of contact between the natives and the occupying forces is less and less year after year. As the Americans have built schools, PX's, bowling alleys, we saw less and less of them - now we see nothing of them." Indian playwright and novelist Mrs. Santha Rama Rau commented, "And when you add the language barrier, and the economic barrier, when everybody in any Asian country sees people in the American compounds living in a way they can't hope to live themselves, with all sorts of refrigerators and stoves that they can't possibly have, then the wall has got to be broken down soon, or later it gets higher and higher. Other guest on the National Educational Television and Radio Center episode were Saville Davis, managing editor of The Christian Science Monitor; and Harlan Cleveland, dean of Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.. Davis said, "In India, one of the first things that would always come up was the charge against the United States that basically we were militarist and belligerent. I found that one of the easiest ways for me to try to explain what American policy was, was to explain how the American people learned this very simple lesson from Hitler. Ultimately you have to challenge an aggressor. And the moment one brought that analogy to Hitler I found that Indians often would say, 'Yes, I do understand that point. I can see that now.'" Rama Rau said, "The people that are doing practical things get a great deal of acceptance and appreciation in almost any foreign country that they go to. I think the question of understanding is a great deal more complicated and very deeply linked up with the image you present of yourselves. When you are talking in terms of understanding another country, you need to bring a completely different sort of equipment that you need if you were simply going to help them, or to colonize them or gain from them economically, or for any of the reasons that one has had in the past." Cleveland said, "The last time I was in Indonesia, the Foreign Minister there said something I thought was very wise. 'People will expect the Americans to make great effort to understand them, without themselves making a great effort to understand the Americans. People shouldn't worry about it so much. This is the price of power.'""We are now so preoccupied with taking ourselves so seriously, so worried about every little thing that is said about us around the world, we haven't learned a lesson which I guess the British learned quite a long time ago; power and popularity don't really hold hands very gently and easily." Roosevelt commented, "Perhaps we ought to remember that respect is more important perhaps than love." Davis said, "I am not so sure that it is a bad thing to want to be loved. These Americans are swarming around the world after their curious fashion these days and behaving pretty much like themselves, and many of them trying to get along with people. Isn't that perhaps a good idea?" "Prospects of Mankind" is a monthly, hour-long presentation produced for the National Educational Television and Radio Center by WGBH-TV, Boston. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)
Series Description
This is a monthly series of nine one-hour television episodes featuring Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. The former first lady serves as the host and moderator. On each episode she will be joined by three guests: 1) A key foreign figure such as a visiting prime minister, a United Nations representative or a man or woman of prominence representing his country unofficially. 2) An important American in public life or a person of equal consequence from the academic world. 3) A distinguished representative from the press or other mass media who will focus the discussion on the relevant issues and controversies at stake. On each episode Mrs. Roosevelt and her guests will discuss a current international problem of major importance in which the United States is involved. The program is made up as two 29-minute episodes with a station break between the two portions. "Prospects of Mankind" is a television series designed to provide a wide public with those facts and opinions important to an understating of the underlying fabric of current international problems. It derives its inspiration from the ideals and endeavors of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. On each episode Mrs. Roosevelt joins three distinguished guests who through their position of authority or expression of opinion have a significant influence on the denervation or interpretation of current issues. Saville Davis and Erwin D. Canham, editors of The Christian Science Monitor, at times assist in moderating the discussions. These program is produced for National Educational Television by WGBH-TV in cooperation with Brandeis University. In addition to the audience of educational stations throughout the country they have been seen in the key areas of New York and Washington, DC, through the facilities of the Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation.
Broadcast Date
1960-04-17
Asset type
Episode
Genres
Talk Show
Topics
Social Issues
Global Affairs
Politics and Government
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
00:59:07
Embed Code
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Credits
Associate Producer: Michaelis, Diana Tead
Associate Producer: Michaelis, Diana Tead
Consultant: Fuchs, Lawrence H.
Director: Davis, David M. (David McFarland), 1926-2007
Director: Davis, David M. (David McFarland), 1926-2007
Executive Producer: Morgenthau, Henry, 1917-
Executive Producer: Morgenthau, Henry, 1917-
Guest: Davis, Saville
Guest: Rau, Santha Rama
Guest: Brogan, Denis W.
Guest: Cleveland, Harlon
Host: Roosevelt, Eleanor
Producer: Noble, Paul
Producer: Noble, Paul
Producing Organization: WGBH Educational Foundation
Production Assistant: Kassel, Virginia
Production Coordinator: Gilbert, Emanuel
Writer: Michaelis, Diana Tead
Writer: Michaelis, Diana Tead
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 308212 (WGBH Barcode)
Format: Digital Betacam
Generation: Master
WGBH
Identifier: 19242 (WGBH Barcode)
Format: Betacam
Generation: Master
WGBH
Identifier: 19050 (WGBH Barcode)
Format: D3
Generation: Master
Library of Congress
Identifier: 2411956-1 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 16mm film
Generation: Copy: Access
Color: B&W
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Citations
Chicago: “Prospects of Mankind with Eleanor Roosevelt; 107; The American Image Abroad,” 1960-04-17, WGBH, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-17crjp1w.
MLA: “Prospects of Mankind with Eleanor Roosevelt; 107; The American Image Abroad.” 1960-04-17. WGBH, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-17crjp1w>.
APA: Prospects of Mankind with Eleanor Roosevelt; 107; The American Image Abroad. Boston, MA: WGBH, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-17crjp1w