People who thought that she was busy going around trying to stir up difficulty where there was none or less than she imagined, were quite critical of her. She was, we must never forget, a public figure. And in democracies, public figures tend to attract criticism as well as praise. The most dangerous thing would be if anybody were regarded as above criticism. And Eleanor Roosevelt is, in recent years, getting there.

I have no idea why she quieted down on the subject. Maybe she was told to. I can imagine that it wasn't a very popular position in the Administration, with her own husband having ordered by executive order the internment. Maybe she was just told: "Look, we're in a war now. Turn off your social conscience."

That was a general impression that one got, that she [Eleanor Roosevelt] was always flitting around the country and descending on some place in the Ozarks that she decided was disadvantaged, and announcing that something had to be done. And she had a very active social conscience, which I think in general is to her credit, although it tended, as many people thought, to just be overdone to the point where it gave rise to this crack that she regarded the whole world as one vast slum project

One of the most influential women of the 20th century? Well, that may be overdoing it. When one thinks of really influential women, my mind turns to Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, ... some of the true political leaders in their own right.

These people looked Japanese, were originally Japanese, were numerous. We had no way of knowing to what extent they had been infiltrated. To their great credit, it seems not to have been very much at all. But I can understand why. And I rather respect Eleanor for standing out against the tide at that point. But it certainly was a tide. And I'm not going to say it was unjustified.

This was another subject of criticism. She was being paid, as I recall, during the 1940's, what was then a princely sum, something like a dollar a word. I don't say that for the column, but for articles that she would write and things like that. And she made lots of speeches.

You know, you can't always criticize without somebody being at the end of the stick. And she perhaps did not always grant credit to her opponents for their motives, any more than they granted credit to her for hers.