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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

Q:

But you recognized her as a movie star when you saw her, on the plane?

Heiskell:

I think so, Yes. That's quite a long time ago. Then I came back to reality and I mean reality. Namely, I came back to the U.S., which by and large wasn't caring too much about the war, had written off Europe. Everybody including my friend Del Paine agreed that England would be gone, and it seemed to me that most people didn't care very much. Being a European at heart, this was a very difficult, emotional period for me during which I think I probably made a good number of enemies by expressing myself very strongly about the fact that Europe was our affair, and we couldn't turn our backs on Europe. But most people didn't care. An awful lot of people didn't want to be involved in any kind of war and the friction between those who felt you should do something and those who didn't care, or didn't want to care, became quite extreme including in the office. I would say probably half of the office of the Life people, I didn't know the others very well, were isolationists or anyway didn't want to get mixed up with that terrible thing over there.

Q:

But Luce was weighing in how strongly for a non-isolationist position?

Heiskell:

He was weighing in quite strongly. One has to remember that books tend to make him out to be all-powerful. The facts of life are that unless you want to be a total dictator, which he wasn't





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