In the two months after Pearl Harbor, good, grey Cordell Hull grew greyer and paler. He had played a role like Joshua's, trying to make the Rising Sun stand still. He had fought a desperate delaying action, talking endlessly with the wily Japanese envoys, straining every one of his tough but ancient fibers to postpone a day that he knew must inevitably come. The campaign wore out 70-year-old Mr. Hull. Weakened by colds and grippe, nerve-shot, the Secretary of State went to Florida in February, to rest in the sun.
Last week he...
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