Letter from Eleanor Roosevelt to Harry S. Truman

APARTMENT 15-A - SQUANE, NEW YORK 11. N. Y. June 21, 1949 Dear Mr. President: I want first to thank you for the opportunities you have given me to work on the Human Rights Commission. The session closed last night. Realizing that you probably do not want to be bothered by a personal report at the present time, I am writing this, though, of course, if you want me to come to Washington I shall do so. The result of our work 1s only the first draft of the Covenant. "e discussed only political and civil rights. The document which will go to the governments, however, will be accompanied by different plans for ways of enforcing the rights that are to be accepted in the final Covenant. Our only plan is a joint plan with the United Kingdom This to agree is and the with only the thing United go on Kingdom. which we were I have able it will forward with the others. never known them to be 80 uncooperative as they were in this session. That my be due to the fact that the young Foreign Office adviser on the delegation staff accepted all the dir- ections that came from the Foreign Office as being final and therefore vas not able to negotiate on any changes of any kind in words. It was unfortunate especially be- cause in previous sessions we have been able to get together with the United Kingdom on many situations. Needless to say we practically never agreed with the USSR, and they felt that the document was a very poor one because the economic and social rights were not really discussed and are going to governments simply as additional articles for comment by governments.