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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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at Columbia University, who sat on the commission representing Robert Patterson of the Army. Patterson was sometimes there and this man was always there. He's a vestryman of Trinity Church. In the course of the summer a friend of mine nearly always preaches at Trinity Church in New York, so I go down to Trinity when my friend is there. I nearly always meet this man when I go down there. We meet in the vestibule and always say, “Do you remember?” and we both burst into laughter.

There were meetings there that were closer to opera comique than anything I have ever seen in my life, real opera bouffe. People didn't know what they were doing and we got to the point where we said the most absurd things back and forth to each other. Sometimes people knew they were saying absurd things and did it for fun. Other times they just said them and didn't know it was funny. The most ridiculous things were said.

General Hershey is a great one to lead off on that kind of thing. Little hairsplitting, pinpoint differences would be started and carried out to their logical conclusion. It was one of the most ridiculous things in the world. Hershey would start these things for the fun of it. He's a very firstrate man, I think. He's one of these flatfooted people who knows his business and does it. He's moderately humanitarian, but he isn't sick of it. He believes in letting people do about what they want to do, giving them some guide lines. You then wouldn't have to do so much sorting and measuring.





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