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There were two enormously important things going on at once and
they were at right angles to each other. One, of course, was
the influenza epidemic which dictated that you should sort of
shut everything down; and the war which demanded that everything
should speed up -- that certainly the factories should continue
operating. You should continue to have bond drives. Soldiers
should be drafted and sent to the camps jammed into barracks,
put on boats with bunks six high, and sent off to France. One of the great tragedies of the
situation is that there was no correct thing
to do. You can't look back and say, "If our
officials had only done the correct thing." There wasn't
any correct thing to do.
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