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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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That would be the way he would explain it.

Interviewer:

Would you say that to the extent that the relationship deteriorated, it deteriorated after Roosevelt's death, under Truman?

Perkins:

Well, I don't remember now.

Interviewer:

I had the impression Roosevelt did not like Chiang.

Perkins:

Well, it was very hard for a person like Roosevelt to like people like Chiang or Madam Chiang, you see. I mean, they were too subtle--to Eastern. Too Oriental. It was a very hard thing for him to understand. He tended to think of it in terms of his Clipper ship Grandfather, you know, who had described the Chinese to him in his youthful days just as my Grandfather had described it to his children, you see. I think I've told you what my Grandfather's geography said about China, the little geography that he studied in school which summed up every country in the world and the people and so forth in two pages--two little pages, at that, you know, about six inches high and three inches across, of the geography. Oh, about half and inch wide, half an inch deep. “The Chinese are a proud people, believing themselves superior to all others.” That was all.

That was the opinion that the Clipper ship people had of them. They're a proud people. They believe themselves





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