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When I came back to the United States, I spoke to Roosevelt and to Cordell Hull about all this. I was very full of all this. On the boat coming back I got to thinking about it very intensely, reviewing, as one does, the series of episodes that had happened a few weeks or months ago. I pieced things together that at the moment I had seen no connection between. I made a few notes and made up my mind that it was my duty, although it was obviously not my field of knowledge, to make such a report as I could.
I did report to the President. I told him what I had seen, where I had been, who said what was said, whether it was a highly placed man like the Prince de Broglie, or whether it was a shoe cobbler in Orange, whether it was a man who was loafing around outside the barracks at Annecy. Of course, women are great informants. They have a great capacity to gossip. You can learn a great deal if you stop and talk to a woman washing clothes about the clothes. I used the technique of an old social worker. You don't ask them the questions you would like to know. You just ask about the washing, whether the water is hard or soft, whether they have an ample supply of water. You find out that they have to take great buckets and go down to the village well to get the water, but they prefer to wash
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