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as many people as there were in that room that day. These were all just members of the committee and their principal aides, but members of committees and principal aides can get to be eight or ten people very quickly. I remember feeling that this was no way to do it and saying that to McCloy privately, “If this is going to be done at all, ought it not to be done by one person, who isn't even known and whose solemn obligation is to keep his own mouth shut?”

But I never really did know why it stopped meeting. I once said to Ickes, “You haven't called us together recently.”

He said, “No, it seems best not to.”

I bowed, and that was that. If anybody else asked him, I presume they got the same answer. This appointing of a committee by the President was not unusual. He did that very often. A lot of problems can be washed out by appointing a committee. A lot of small annoyances, or small questions that the President wasn't ready to come to grips with and couldn't do anything about anyhow, he handled by appointing a committee. That's all right. That's a good way to take care of a situation. Somebody makes a fuss about something, so you appoint a committee to look into it. It's not a political invention of Women's Clubs.