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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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I said, “Well, I'm not in constant communication with him. Don't think that. But I did know him. I knew him when he was young.”

“Well, what kind of a fellow do you think he is? Will he keep his word?”

I said, “Oh yes, I think he's a man of his word. I never heard that complaint from any of his friends. As I've said to you before, what they complain about is that he doesn't listen to the advice they give him and that he dashes off and does what he wants to do, what he's determined to do anyhow, that's he's not cooperative, that he's a leader rather than a committee man.” I remember putting it that way. I don't think it was an original way for me to put it. I certainly had said that about him several times to other people - “He's not a committee man.”

Roosevelt laughed at that. Thereafter he asked me twice again, alone, something about Churchill, about his personality traits - his speaking the truth, his objective view of things. Is he angry at anybody? Does anger becloud his judgment at times? About that I wouldn't know. I didn't know him well enough to know how he acted when he was angry. I could only say what he had been many years earlier when he was young and I was very young and certainly no great judge of people from the basis of experience.

The fact that he asked me about him once in public and twice privately made me come to the conclusion that the





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