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the late sixties and early seventies is a good age to exercise judgment. It's not a good age to come into a new situation without experience and gather experience. It takes too long. But he had so much experience. He had been head of the State Department. He'd been Secretary of War before. He sat in three Cabinets. He knew the government of the United States as he knew his own library. He had been the Governor General of the Philippines, which, he always said, was one of the most enlightening and strengthening experiences he'd had, because there he had had to deal with people directly and bring about a change of view, a change of opinion, a change of behavior and acting that could not be done in any except a personal way. He'd been extraordinarily good at that. He had hated to go to the Philippines, had just hated it. I talked with him at the time he was appointed to that post. He just didn't want to go. He said to me then, “This is just a terrible duty that has been laid on me. I have to do it because it's my duty. I don't want to do it.” But he threw himself into it.
He had this great capacity to throw himself into a situation and not only to learn from it, but to do it by increasing knowledge, and increasing intuitive
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