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while I had no possible appreciation of it as a military proposition, knew nothing about it, and didn't even know how to read up on the subject, seemed to me a good thing to do. Anything that we could do to assist the British was good.

This idea of wangling out some way to lend them things, which was a brilliant idea of the President's, seemed good to me. It was really based upon very old, primitive and countrified ways of doing things. He drew upon his extraordinary emotional and intellectual equipment. He explained the program by saying that if his neighbor's house was on fire, he would lend him a length of hose. He could draw very large deductions and large plans from such simple operations which he had observed in his childhood and youth, which were common in the country and seemed natural, like lending hose or ladders to a neighbor when his house was on fire, and the neighbor would reciprocate when he could. I had thought the President himself thought up the word Lend Lease. I'm sure he developed the idea, and it was so deeply based upon his countrified experience that it struck a responsive note in the average American's mind.

Roosevelt was not Machiavellian in his plans. He was a natural man. He was subtle. All kinds of influences