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mills wouldn't sign a contract with them, although they had always had contracts and agreements with the owners and operators of coal mines.

Also in this November 14th Cabinet meeting Hull was very pessimistic about the Japanese peace negotiations that were going on at the time. I remember that he made a long report in which he was very lugubrious and very pessimistic. The expression of his face and the tone of his voice was very discouraged and cynical. Of course, he had a very sharp and quaint way of saying quite rough things. He used that to indicate how little he thought of them, that they were hypocrites. He used very strong language, actually profane, and bordering on the obscene. He didn't exactly swear by “the right hind leg of the Lamb of God,” as I heard a man do once when he was very angry, but he used very picturesque profanity. I'm not sure that the President didn't say to me at that time after the others had gone, “If Cordell says, ‘Oh Chwist' again, I'm going to scream with laughter. I can't stand profanity with a lisp.” Hull never could say the Cr sound, made it a w.

Anyhow, he was very angry this day and he used a great deal of strong Tennessee profanity in describing the degree to which he thought the Japanese had sunk below the level of the human race. He apparently believed that an effort was being made to pull the wool over his eyes. He was





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