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hadn't been anticipated that he would be on their side. Deep in his own mind he knew it was right, and I felt that he came around then in a very honest and decent way.

So, all that midwinter—December, January, February— was occupied politically and intellectually with the ideas of this Lend Lease going through. I don't remember too much about these other war things. I didn't know anything about the military strategy and was not too interested in it.

It was during this period that Roosevelt used to look at me once in a while in Cabinet meeting as though I was a pacifist. He was educating the Cabinet in this period. He was letting them know a little of this and a little of that. He was educating them so that they might understand what the political, economic and military hazards of the USA were, also to prepare their minds for the idea that it was entirely within the range of possibilities that we would have to get a gun someday.

My own instincts were that if the British were licked in this war, it was going to be a disaster for us, and for what I regarded even more important than us—for Christian civilization. Therefore we should pull our full weight in it. I was anything but a pacifist. Prior to the First world War I should have said that certainly I was a pacifist, which meant