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that it was good for the country to have a Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Not many years ago somebody proposed that young Franklin should be made Assistant Secretary, for that very reason.

When Swanson died we had a great big state funeral, a horrible affair, in the capital. State funerals are very painful. Nothing is ever done in worse taste than a state funeral, including an operatic soprano singing the “Star Spangled Banner.”

Charles Edison, who had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy, was appointed to succeed Swanson, as just a temporary appointment. One day at Cabinet meeting, to my great surprise, the President said, “Of course, I've got to fill this post of Secretary of the Navy. Swanson was a great loss. We must think about it very practically because these are very difficult times.” This was just before the Republican convention. The President went on to say, “There are very difficult days. The European war is going to be one of our major problems in this country. I hope there'll never be any necessity for us to come to conclusions that we have to do something, but we can't avoid episodes. We can't avoid incidents. We saw that before the First World War. Somebody's going to sink somebody's little fishing