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of War, that the tensions were greater and greater and that the pressures upon the US were more and more significant and that there was real hazard. I remember thinking many a time that there was real hazard that just out of a stub of the toe we would find ourselves in war. We Were doing very delicate things, such as this business of carrying convoys and what was in them, so that before we knew it sometime there might be an incident which would be a precipitating cause of trouble.

In November it was obvious that things were getting tighter and tigher. By this time both Henry Stimson and Mr. Knox were exceedingly secretive. They said less in Cabinet and appeared to be needing longer conferences with the President, either together or separately afterwards, all of which made me deduce that things were getting tighter. There was more danger and hazard to mention even in that company certain things that were known both to Stimson and to Knox.

The President obviously worried about it a great deal. On Friday afternoon, December 5, 1941, we had a regular Cabinet meeting. Again Secretary Hull, who led off, practically said nothing except to talk about his complete gloom and disgust with the conversations which he was then having with the Japanese envoys who were then here in Washington. He was very sober and very lugubrious. He was so gloomy that the gloom fairly stood out all over him. He said, “They don't mean business, Mr. President. I'm sure they don't