"We Believed in Our Hearts"

By HP-Time.com Monday, Sep. 13, 1948

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Bullitt tried to convince Roosevelt that Stalin was a Caucasian bandit and a Communist to boot who believed in the Communist conquest of the world. But Roosevelt (according to Bullitt) replied: "Bill, I don't dispute the logic of your reasoning. I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. Harry [Hopkins] says he's not and that he doesn't want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace . . . It is my responsibility and not yours and I'm going to play my hunch."

^{* In the next-to-last installment of a 12-part series, The
Secret Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, which Sherwood wrote after sifting
through 40 crates of Hopkins' notes. Actually, Hokins was too sick to
make many notes on the Yalta meeting. Sherwood filled in the gaps by
interviews with men to whom Hopkins had talked afterwards.
* Because
of his illness, Hopkins was flown back to the U.S. after Yalta.
Roosevelt was disap pointed and displeased that he would not be with
him aboard the cruiser Quincy to help write the speech which he was
preparing for Congress.
"When Hopkins left the Quincy at Algiers," Sherwood wrote,
"the President's 'goodbye' to him was not a very amiable one — a
circumstance which it is sad to record, for Hopkins never saw his great
friend again."}

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