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The he went on to expand that. He said that even the War Department had such an enormous expansion of its routines that to do the thinking ahead necessary and the industrial planning was too much. Of course, the whole division of logistics in the army had been the army's great modern development, and they were very proud of their logistics department. Now whether it was any good or not, I don't know. Perhaps it wasn't, and perhaps the President knew that it wasn't any good, and he wanted to stimulate some other way.
I began to see this look on people's faces, which I'm sure was reflected on mine, showing that they thought, “This is a strange idea. If we can't do it, who is going to do it?” Then he broached this idea that we ought to draw in outside people who were related to every walk of life in America. He was going to set them up as an advisory commission. He appointed William Knudsen, Hillman, Leon Henderson, Harriet Elliott, Chester Davis and a few others. He said that they would have available to them all the personnel that they needed from the government. So the people who were doing the work were somewhat government people, but not entirely so. I wish there had been more
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