Remembered Words

by HARVEY IH. BUNDY

DURING the last sixty years, both in private life and while I was in government service, I have listened to a great many people talking. Sometimes the words have been spoken at formal occasions, but more often in personal conversations, and of course most of what was said has vanished from my recollection. Occasionally, however, something said became fixed in my memory, either because it seemed especially penetrating or helpful to me or because by reason of its humor it cast a pleasant light in a troubled world.

1.My father, McGeorge Bundy, in Michigan about 1895, and repeated to me many times during my early years: —

“Never boast about yourself. Let others speak well of you if they will; and if they will, it will be valuable to you.”

2.Woodrow Wilson, the President of Princeton, at a Phi Beta Kappa dinner at Yale (1907): —

“The real purpose of a college is its academic program and not its side shows.”

In this speech, the most eloquent I ever heard, he made the whole of education so exciting that at the end of the speech we all stood on our chairs and cheered. Forty-five years later exPresident Seymour of Yale told me that this speech of President Wilson changed his career from that of a lawyer to that of a teacher.

3.Dean Ezra Thayer, of the Harvard Law School, in giving me advice on the question of where to practice law (1914), said: —

“It makes very little difference where you decide to live and work. You will find that at the age of fifty you will have arrived at about the same place in your profession.”

4. A. Lawrence Lowell, pacing up and down in his study in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about 1915:

“There are two kinds of men — those who do a job well and those who get credit for doing a job well. It is by no means certain that they will be the same men.”

In commenting on the claims of law students that they studied twelve to fifteen hours a day: —

“It is an illusion that a man can do effective intensive and uninterrupted intellectual work for more than six hours a day.”

5. While still active on the Supreme Court, Mr. Justice O. W. Holmes had at his home an Eightieth Birthday dinner at which he was surrounded by his former secretaries. He said: —

“I still find it true in life, as I found it in the Civil War, that one never captures a trench without finding another trench just beyond awaiting attack.”

C. Herbert Hoover, in 1917 or 1918 at the time when the United States Food Administration was dealing with the British on certain matters, to me as a young Assistant Attorney of the Food Administration busy with drafting agreements:

“You must realize that these British are very able traders.”

7. Youthful voice, somewhat plaintively, at a large family party where, according to the custom of at least one branch of the family, everybody was talking at the same time in a high tone of voice: —

“Please don’t talk while I am interrupting.” This has since been adopted as our family motto.

8. Sir Ronald Lindsay, the British Ambassador in Washington, talking to me ;is Assistant Secretary of State about the World War I debts, while walking in the British Embassy gardens (1932): —

“The difficulty in dealing with the United States on a matter of this sort is that executive officers under your Constitution can only threaten. They can never promise.”

9. Robert A. Lovett, Assistant Secretary of War, about 1943, in commenting on General Marshall’s skill in bringing together an able General Staff: —

“After a long period of peace the Army is apt to find enough dead wood in the General Staff to make a fire hazard.”

10. George C. Marshall, during the Battle of the Bulge, when several people wanted Marshall to give cable advice to Eisenhower as to action to be taken: —

“General Eisenhower is in command in a battle. I shall not jog his elbow.”

11. James B. Conant, in December, 1941, after Pearl Harbor, at his house in Cambridge, in discussing the war situation and the belief expressed by some that the war might well end in a stalemate: —

“The Germans can never win this war, and we shall win it unless they are ahead of us in the development of the atomic bomb.”

12. Henry L. Stimson, at Potsdam in 1945, when he had just received a cable telling him that the Alamogordo atomic test had been successful. The cable from George L. Harrison said in substance, “Child is born. Larger than expected. Its cries could be heard at my farm and the light in his eyes seen at yours.” This meant that the explosion had been so terrific that if it had been set off in Washington the sound could have been heard at Upperville, Virginia, some forty miles away, and the light from the explosion seen at Stimson’s farm on Long Island over two hundred miles away. Stimson remarked to John J. McCloy and to me: —

“Well, I have been responsible for spending two billions of dollars on this atomic venture. Now that it is successful I shall not be sent to prison in Fort Leavenworth.”

In July, 1945, at Potsdam after returning from a conference, Mr. Stimson said to me in our headquarters: —

“I have told General Arnold that he must strike out Kyoto, the Japanese shrine city, from the list of possible atomic targets. The President approves of my decision.

13. Winston Churchill, at Potsdam, after Secretary Stimson had read to him the report of the first atomic test, in which the light from the explosion was described as like seven suns at midday:—

“Stimson, what was gunpowder? Trivial. What was electricity? Meaningless. This atomic bomb is the Second Coming in Wrath.”

14. General George Patton, in full uniform, with rows of blazing decorations and four stars on many parts of his uniform, including the bolsters of his pearl-handled revolvers, was standing on the bank of a Bavarian stream, in July, 1945, after returning from the Potsdam Conference. Wading in the stream was Secretary Stimson, casting for trout. A soldier off duty walked by and failed to salute the general. The general in stentorian tone: “Soldier, don‘t you salute an officer?” The soldier froze and trembling said, “I didn’t see you, sir.” Patton to the soldier: —

“Is there anything more I can put on to persuade you I am a four-star general?” Then smiling, he said, “Run along, soldier.”

15. President Eisenhower, after his coronary attack, in a letter to me, a recovering coronary victim: —

“ I know only too well the physical and psychological disturbances that attend such a bout and I would fervently and vainly wish that none of my friends would be so afflicted. But I do want earnestly to assure you that the picture is not all black. I now feel as well as I ever did in my life, and the only difference in my personal habits is that I must conscientiously pace myself. That in itself provides a little more time for reflection, as did the hospital experience, and I find that I have gained, rather than lost, from the whole business.”

l6. Henry L. Stimson, in emphasizing to me, and later to my son McGeorge Bundy, a principle in which he believed all his life and which he felt he had been successful in applying as Governor General of the Philippines:–

“If you expect men to trust you, you must start by trusting them.”