the issues upon which NRA lapsed into its present desuetude
were never made with me during my incumbency. I was execut-
ing NRA under specific written orders contained in the Appen-
dix. Nobody ever contested those orders. Nobody ever came
nobly to the grapple on any cleavage of policy or opinion. On
the contrary, although I frequently asked whether my course
was wrong, my action too headlong, my voice too vehement, I
was never checked nor advised to slow, stop, or divert.

Furthermore, I want to make it very clear that, although I
criticize only two persons in this book, I do not impugn their
motives. They must have thought they were right. But I do
seriously arraign their methods in this -- that these issues de-
served to be raised, to be debated, to be resolved in plain view
and beyond question.

For too little acumen, for too great complacency in not mak-
ing issues and taking them to the White House, I blame myself
-- bitterly.

Nowhere in this book will the most diligent reader find any
criticism of the President, either expressed or intended to be
implied. It will not be found because it is not there, either in
this book or tucked away in some obscure corner of my heart or
mind. It is necessary for me to say this because I know that
there will be attempts to impute it from some of the circum-
stances related.

I am in such deadly earnest about NRA that if I had such a
criticism I would either make it or else not write this book --
probably the latter -- because NRA is only one part of the great-
est social advance of modern times for which the world has the
President to thank.

I have no such criticism for it is only plain justice to say of
Franklin Roosevelt that I never stood at any crossing of the
ways. I never took a firm position, I never raised a major issue,
I never even made a mistake or committed one of my many
blunders, I never in an emergency took summary action not
previously authorized -- that he did not back me to the limit.

I do not mean that I agreed with all his policies. As shall here
be made clear I didn't. I do not even mean that I agreed with
all that was done in respect of NRA. It is in just this respect
that I must take the greatest blame. I did not make issues at
several critical points where I should have made them.

For all the harm that flowed from that omission -- and some-

-xi-