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Cabinet was fighting with each other, fighting for what the Press chooses to call “power.” I don't know what it is. I never saw it, except the old-fashioned row between Agriculture and Interior which had gone on regularly. I didn't see any scrapping for power anywhere else. I guess there was a little probably--jealousies about where this, that or the other enterprise ought to be, and of course we all had felt a little aggrieved that Roosevelt had chosen to administer the War through special agencies rather than through his regular agencies or through special agencies appointed to be subordinate to the regular agencies. I think that had stirred up a little scheming. Not scheming so much as irritations.

I don't remember anything about that Cabinet meeting. You'd think you'd remember about the first Truman Cabinet meeting, but I can't recall anything about it, because I tend to get them mixed in my mind. I think he again said to the Cabinet that he wanted them all to stay where they were and continue their work and so forth. I remember that I took it literally, and said, “Well, I've got to act as though this were the situation, and continue to do whatever I think is right and proper, what I have been doing.”

But I realized it was going to be a problem to report to him. You see, there were no natural channels of reporting, and he was going to be terribly busy trying to master the major problems that were before the President. He had hod no