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To this day I don't know really who thought that up. I think it was Harry Hopkins. I don't know why I think so, but I do, that's all. I have no evidence of it, no proof of it, and I wouldn't want to put that down as being anything that I know. I probably gained some hunch on it from Lubin, who saw a great deal of Hopkins and whom Hopkins pumped all the time for knowledge, information, advice in this whole field where he was thinking ahead with regard to, “How do you know how much of this and how much of that? How many men for this, and how many men for that?” Hopkins was already thinking in those terms, and he pumped Lubin a good deal. He knew him very well. I think it may be something that Lubin said to me later on, not at the time, of course, that made me think that Hopkins perhaps had thought up this plan.

Hopkins was very politically aware. I'm not sure that he didn't exaggerate the hazard, but, on the other hand, he may have had a good evaluation of it. He saw the hazard of the country not following the President in his foreign policy and in this policy of aid to the Allies. If the Cabinet, as the Council of National Defense, does this control business, it is the President doing it. If it's an advisory commission of outsiders, who have their own skins