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their confidence, into their educational systems, and on the whole it looked like a progressive forward movement for the blending of the East and the West.

At any rate, I suspect that many had the same reaction that I had that it would be a universal disaster for the British to be knocked to smithereens at Singapore. We would feel like poltroons if we did not go to the help of people whose moral and political purposes we agreed with and believed to be good and reasonable. I think we all felt shattered by this discussion because the problem seemed so near. You were aware as you went out of the room that the President and Frank Knox had got to decide something very soon. We were going out, getting our cars, and going off for the weekend, but the President, Frank Knox and a few others had got to make some decision in a very short time. As usual, I didn't think that it was as close as it turned out to be, and apparently nobody else did.

Practically the whole Cabinet was out of the city when Pearl Harbor broke. I was in New York. Wallace was out of town. Biddle was in Ohio. Somebody else was quite far West. Henry Morgenthau was up at his farm in Poughkeepsie. Stimson and Knox and Hull were in Washington. Walker was in New York. Morgenthau, Wallace, Walker and I all came back on the same plane. There was nothing said on Friday that made it seem at all imperative that anyone should change his weekend plans, which were not recorded. Most people had some kind of engagement over the weekend.