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in Cabinet meeting in which the question was, “What will the departments do in case of war?” Whether that was '40, or not, I couldn't say. But certainly it was discussed and discussed more than once in Cabinet meeting. The universal advice of the Cabinet was not to set up a special war administrative agency or activity, but to utilize the departments of government as already organized and staffed, giving them whatever extraordinary powers needed to be given, and would have to be given, of course, in case of war to somebody, counting upon their technical knowledge, experience, operating habits to make it possible for them to take on the larger powers that would be granted to them, either by the Congress or by the President delegating some of his war powers, specific of his war powers to them.

I'm sure that every member of the Cabinet emphasized that and stressed it as what he thought desirable. Whether there was a smelling of a rat even then that there would be a suggestion made to move into an extraordinary super government for the period of the war, I don't know.

Somebody ought to read back in the periodical literature of that time. There were articles written in either news magazines or periodicals indicating of how we'd have to have a great concentration of government