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poor food and the inadequacy of diets in Spain as a result of the Spanish Civil War. I think the Department of Agriculture had become interested in the international exchange of foods even before the war. By '39 the world was at war so that when he came into the Cabinet the war was on. Even though we had not formally declared war, we were at war. The Cabinet itself was at war. There was no question about that. The Cabinet knew that we were involved in this war. The whole business of steel shipments, coal shipments, food supplies had been discussed. I remember that Wickard seemed to know a good deal about international food supplies and was concerned about the food shipments very early, and saying something about it. The question of food also came up in lend-lease in 1941.
I remember realizing that Wickard was extremely well informed on all this and that he was no amateur just repeating what somebody in his department had told him. He knew what the food supply was, how you got food from one place to another. He knew what they were doing. I don't think that I started to measure him as able or not at that time. I think that I thought of him as a very well informed person in the field of agriculture and in the field of all the problems of
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