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I believed that there ought to be peace and that it was reasonable to expect it. But after that I never thought that there could be such a thing as permanent peace, never for one moment fooled with that idea. I knew it wasn't so. Although I would have been the last to wish for war and to plan for it, would have striven to avoid it in every way possible, I could never feel myself alienated from those who were planning the war, nor in any way involved with the people who were honest pacifists at the time of the Second World War.
But Roosevelt had in his mind, I'm sure, this pattern that women are always against war. Eleanor was against war. Eleanor was a pacifist. Eleanor didn't believe in any of these things. Therefore he would look at me when he said some of these things as if he were addressing to me this explanation about how very important it was to maintain the British in this fight, how there were worse things than battleships. “Well, Frances, you know a battleship isn't the worst thing in the world.” He would say it as if I were the one who was offering him some opposition.
After two or three times I finally said to him, “Look here, Mr. President, I'm not a pacifist. Please get that into your mind. I'm not a pacifist at all. I don't sit around praying or wishing for war, but the last thing I am is a pacifist. I know what war is, and I know that the human race
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