“My memory…is of a department without direction, composed of a lot of busy people working hard and usefully but as a whole not functioning as a foreign office. It did not chart a course to be furthered by the success of our arms, or to aid or guide our arms. Rather it seems to have been adrift carried hither and yon by the currents of war or pushed about by collisions with more purposeful craft.”

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

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Dean Acheson 49
Statesman and lawyer 1893–1971

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