Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 912

to do was to keep out entangling alliances, and that that was the tradition of this country.

I'm sure that if there isn't a hazard hanging right over our heads then we are very isolationist. We don't care about anything else. This country's all right and we want to keep it that way, but we don't want to work for it.

So that was the feeling at the very beginning of the war, when the President set up all these new agencies. My theory is that the apathy in the country startled him and he was afraid of its gaining headway and that it might sap us of our vigor. I don't think that he infused a spirit of excitement and turmoil and change in any deliberate way to counteract this apathy. I think he just thought that if there were more people participating in the planning and operating of these things, more people would therefore be as concerned and as dedicated to the cause as the rest of us were. He didn't expect these businessmen to be New Dealers, but just to help him win the war.

Now another thing is that the war powers are terrible powers. They should not be given to anybody on a permanent basis. I agree to that. You give strong powers to somebody to do something that ought not to be tolerated in peacetime. If you're going to do that, you'd better give it to a special agency that can be immediately abolished and collapsed when the war is over. If you give a special power to the Department





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help