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know. He had either heard a radio, or had gotten a report from a radio broadcast. He said, “I don't know exactly where, but I gather that there's been some shooting in the Pacific. That's all I know. I thought, when I heard that, that I had better get back to Washington.”
We talked about other things. It's the way you talk about other things when you're in a moment of intense dread. Something terrible has happened and you say to yourself, “Don't lose your head. Keep your feet on the ground. Take it easy. Don't get excited. Don't get alarmed over nothing. Don't let hysteria prevail. Screw on your head tight. Don't dream of things that aren't so.” I've seen that happen in other situations when there was a great crisis on. People talk to each other deliberately about other things. They all know that something terrible has happened, or they think they know, but they talk deliberately about the state of the garden, whether the trees are a little bit more advanced than usual at this time of year, perfectly reasonable nothings, which I think is a psychological device for keeping control of yourself, particularly when you don't know and when all you've got is dread. Dread, of course, can make you slightly insane if you don't control the elements that go to make it up and to counterbalance it. When you know the facts and know what's to be done, then you're in no danger of insanity. You don't get hysterial then. Your hysteria might come if you let
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