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At any rate, the European war was becoming more and more a matter of concern to Americans, to anyone who looked out upon the world, as a situation in which human beings were more closely integrated, more closely bound to each other than they ever had been before, because of the great advance in communication, transportation, international business, and so forth. The war situation made a very terrific internal political problem for most people. That was bound to enter into everybody's consideration of the Presidency, I'm sure.

During the first period of the war Roosevelt was certainly exercising a remarkable kind of political leadership in this country. As I observed him, he restrained himself from violent expressions of views about certain dreadful things that happened in the war in order to be able to discuss it fairly calmly with the people over the radio, and to make some forward procedure in the education of the American people as to what the implications of the war were.

I have a strong recollection of thinking at the tire this was all going on - the late months of 1939, after September when the war began - that, although he never said it to me, Roosevelt really thought it was inevitable that we would enter the war at sometime.