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reflected partially in his facial expression of tenseness and calmness, and yet a sense that something was wrong, that there was slight evasion here.

I think I should put in here what Frank Walker said to me. Walker was very close to the President. He hadn't known anything about this, had come down in theplane with me, as a matter of fact. As the meeting broke up and we rose from our chairs to go - it was then very late - Frank Walker said to me, under his breath quietly, not publicly, “You know, I think the boss must have a great sense of relief that this has happened. This is a great load off his mind. I thought the load on his mind was just going to kill him, going to break him down. This must be a great sense of relief to him. At least we know what to do now.”

I remember saying, “Yes, I think so.”

To a certain extent I think probably most of the people in the room had that same sense, although it was naturally more of a surprise to most people than it was to the President. It would have been a total surprise to me if I had not known from the previous week's Cabinet discussion that the Japanese fleet was out, and that the question of what to do if they attacked Singapore, which was a sound theory of what they were going to do, was something that the President was working over in his mind and that I had been conscious of all the hours that I was in New York that weekend.