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He certainly didn't want to enter the war until we were in a very strong position, both militarily speaking and morally speaking. Military considerations certainly had to come first. We had to be in a good position to enter the war. But I thought at the time that he had, in his own mind, gotten a hunch that we would inevitably be drawn into it.
The general tone of the feeling of the people around Roosevelt and of the people in the Cabinet with regard to this outbreak of the European war was one of very bitter disillusionment, real hatred and denunciation of the people who had started this bonfire. To everybody who knew anything about it it seemed almost inevitable that this would spread to enormous proportions. How many of the people who were immediately around thought, as I thought Roosevelt did, that we would inevitably join into it, I don't know, but I'm sure they all felt it was going to spread to enormous proportions and would do indescribable harm to society and civilization. It was going to go far enough to be very destructive. Of course, they had the typical American reaction against the aggressor, the bully who came forward and started this darn thing. I never heard any philosophical expressions
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