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and imagination that the President had. Nor was Knox a party to what the Japanese who were here negotiating were doing and thinking to the same extent that the President was. Nor was either Knox or Hull as imaginative or as subtle as the President in understanding al the possible alternatives in the Japanese mind.
I think the President might have in his own mind developed the concept, “What if these fellows aren't in good faith? Why should we think they are in good faith?” It's possible that he could think about that at levels which the others wouldn't, because he had that imaginative, intuitive mind. So he had many more elements of knowledge and intuitive experience to play upon this surprise situation when it occurred than anybody else had.
I've been asked if it might not be possible that the President, recognizing that this thing had happened, felt a certain element and wave of relief that the long tension of wondering what would they do and when they would do it, and would we have to go to the defense of Singapore without an apparent attack upon ourselves, and should we go to the relief of Singapore, all these conflicts which had so harrassed him for so many weeks or months, were ended. You didn't have to think about that any more. That very wave of relief might have produced in him that psychological atmosphere,
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