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Very bad. I said, “Steve, I'd like a little word with you. What do you think? We've just had a Cabinet meeting and the President expressed himself warmly toward all of us, and I'm sure he feels warmly toward us, but I keep reading these little bits in the paper. Is the time at hand when I should resign? Because I have asked him! I asked him face to face if he wanted me to resign, and he said, ‘No,' and then I said, ‘Well, he would give me ample opportunity to do so when he reached that conclusion?', and he said he would. Is the time at hand, or am I suppose to pluck it out of the air somewhere that this is the day? I don't want to be flopping my resignation up and down, you know. Is it today, is this the time?”

He said to me, “Well, if I were you, I would.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

“Well, I don't like to say any more just now, but if I were you, I'd get that resignation over here tonight.”

“Oh,” I said, “really?”

“Yes,” he said, “I think I would.”

So I said, “All right. What about Francis Biddle? Has he been told this?”

“No, but I'm going to call him up right away.”

“Well,” I said, “this is sudden, isn't it? Because I did ask him outright to give me ample notice--by which I meant, you know, “tell me perhaps the first of next month it