Senate after long joint coi sideration by the President and Manning. The direct of
the Red Cross, an obscure little professor of history from Switzerland, Dr. Igor
Rimski who had developed the Karst-Obre technique indepen’dently and whom the A. P.
F. had discovered in prison after the dusting of Moscow-those three were the only
foreigners. The rest of the list is well known.
Ridpath and his staff were of necessity the original technical crew of the
Commission; United States Army and Navy pilots its first patrolmen. Not all of the
pilots available were needed; their records were searched, their habits and
associates investigated, their mental processes and emotional attitudes examined by
the best psychological research methods available-which weren’t good enough. Their
final acceptance for the Patrol depended on two personal interviews, one with
Manning, one with the President.
Manning told me that he depended more on the President’s feeling for
character than he did on all the association and reaction tests the psychologists
could think up. “It’s like the nose of a bloodhound,” he said. “In his forty years
of practical politics he has seen more phonies than you and I will ever see and each
one was trying to sell him something. He can tell one in the dark.”
The long-distance plan included the schools for the indoctrination of cadet
patrolmen, schools that were to be open to youths of any race, color, or
nationality, and from which they would go forth to guard the peace of every country
but their own. To that country a man would never return during his service. They
were to be a deliberately expatriated band of Janizanies, with an obligation only to
the Commission and to the race, and welded together with a carefully nurtured esprit
de corps.
It stood a chance of working. Had Manning been allowed twenty years without
interruption, the original plan might have worked.
Page 60
The President’s running mate for reelection was the result of a political
compromise. The candidate for Vice President was a confirmed isolationist who ha
opposed the Peace Commission from the first, but was he or a party split in a year
when the oppositio was strong. The President sneaked back in but with greatly
weakened Congress; only his power of vet twice prevented the repeal of the Peace
Act. The Vic President did nothing to help him, although he did n publicly lead the
insurrection. Manning revised h plans to complete the essential program by the end
1952, there being no way to predict the temper of tF next administration.
We were both overworked and I was beginning 1 realize that my health was
gone. The cause was not fi to seek; a photographic film strapped next to my ski
would cloud in twenty minutes. I was suffering froi cumulative minimal radioactive
poisoning. No wel defined cancer that could be operated on, but a sy temic
deterioration of function and tissue. There w~ no help for it, and there was work to
be done. I’ve a ways attributed it mainly to the week I spent sittir on those
canisters before the raid on Berlin.
February 17, 1951. I missed the televue flash aboi the plane crash that
killed the President because I w~ lying down in my apartment. Manning, by that tim
was requiring me to rest every afternoon after lunc though I was still on duty. I
first heard about it from my secretary when I returned to my office, and at om
hurried into Manning’s office.
There was a curious unreality to that meeting. seemed to me that we had
slipped back to that d~ when I returned from England, the day that Estel Karst died.
He looked up. “Hello, John,” he said.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Don’t take it hard, chief,” was all I could
think of to say.
Forty-eight hours later came the message from ti newly sworn-in President
for Manning to report him. I took it in to him, an official despatch which decoded.
Manning read it, face impassive.
“Are you going, chief?” I asked.
“Eh? Why, certainly.”
I went back into my office, and got my topcoat, gloves, and briefcase.
Manning looked up when I came back in. “Never mind, John,” he said. “You’re