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material was second-hand. It was filtered to him through other people, whereas a man who has been in the profession himself has a very quick understanding of a great many subtleties and has had a long experience in judging political and other movements in a variety of countries, and is accustomed to the Foreign Service's way of evaluating different witnesses, knowing which to believe and which not. There's a real difference.
When people came into the Cabinet meeting after the outbreak of the European war in September '39, they were greatly excited. They had come back from wherever they were to be in Washington. I was down in Maine. It was the Sunday of the Labor Day weekend, which meant a general holiday in the USA. Half of the people were out in the country. I was in the country. Everybody else was out in the country. I remember that I was giving a super party that evening for the neighbors, a sort of annual affair. We got the news on the radio in the automobile. I don't own another radio up there. The chauffeur came into the house in the early afternoon to say, “You ought to come out here to listen to the radio. They say there's a war started in Europe.”
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