Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 915

do with young Henry Cabot Lodge's vote than any other man. Poor Henry Cabot Lodge had an awful time with himself about the Lend Lease Bill. He came from a district where there enormous numbers of isolationists. He had a big Irish population there also who didn't want to help the English anyhow on general emotional reasons. It was a bitter political problem for him, a terrible one. Yet he was the one who made the break. I was present in the Senate the day he got up and made his statement and voted for the Lend Lease Bill. He made a very good statement, which was an honorable, patriotic statement. Of course, it had the usual trimming in it that was made of the consumption of his constituents, but it was a good statement. I think Henry Stimson had a great deal to do with clarifying the problem for Henry Cabot Lodge. I won't say he persuaded him, but he mad it possible for him intellectually to find his way to his answer.

I know that he had a great deal to do with Arthur Vandenberg and his change of mind. Vandenberg was also in a terrible predicament. I mean in a terrible personal predicament, inwardly, intellectually, emotionally and morally. Many of them were in confusion. They had a terribly hard set of alternatives and I think Stimson was a great help there.





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help