About 10 minutes later, the right person Roosevelt said appeared in front of John. This person was none other than Captain Edgar Davis, the Secret Service Captain who had been ordered to assist him on his expedition to Europe two years earlier.

When he was in Europe, John got along well with this captain who looked like his lieutenant in his previous life. While working in the Operations Planning Service, he became friends with Davis' brother, Brigadier General Thomas Davis, Chief of Staff Adjutant Staff, and had dinner with the brothers several times.

Just now, when Roosevelt said "see you again", John guessed that this person might be Davis. After all, in the White House Secret Service, he is such an "old acquaintance" in total. Before taking office this time, John also wanted to contact him and inquire about the inside story of the White House by the way. As a result, I learned that he had gone abroad on another mission, and I didn't know when he would be able to return.

"Good afternoon, Mr. President, Mr. Hopkins." Davis saluted Roosevelt first.

"Welcome home, Edgar. Thank you for your hard work this time. Roosevelt said in a very affectionate tone to his most trusted "personal guard," "You should remember this Colonel Vanderbilt." He is now my temporary military adviser. ”

"Of course I do." Davis smiled and stepped forward and held out his right hand to John, "It's nice to see you again, John." ”

"Me too, Edgar." John stood up and shook Davis' hand, "It's great to be able to work with you again. ”

"That's right, Edgar. Originally, you had just returned to China, and you should have been given a few more days of rest. But now there's a more urgent task that John needs your help on......" Hopkins opened up and told Davis about John's plan.

"No problem, I will do my best to help John make the plan well." Davis readily agreed.

"You've worked hard these days, Edgar. Once you're done, you'll be able to hop aboard the Potomac with Tom to Eel Bay for your vacation. I remember the tarpon you caught there the year before, and it was almost four feet. Roosevelt gave Davis a benefit. Letting Davis go fishing with stand-in Tom Wilson gives him a chance to go on a vacation at public expense.

"Thank you, Mr. President. Now is a great time to go out fishing. Davis smiled at Roosevelt's kindness.

Seeing that the matter was almost done, John consciously got up and offered his farewell. As soon as Davis had finished his mission abroad, he came to Roosevelt with a large briefcase, and it was clear that it was time for important things to report. Rather than waiting for Roosevelt to open his mouth, it is better to take the initiative to leave.

Clinker Roosevelt whispered a few words to Hopkins, but instead left him behind, "John, you can stay and listen to it too." Edgar had just traveled to China with a shipment of Lend-Lease supplies and had brought back a lot of interesting information. I've heard that you have done a lot of research on China, and you have translated a book. Chennault's air force was also your first one, and you can help analyze it. ”

John was shocked when he heard this, it turned out that Davis had gone to China on a mission before. To be honest, in the last year or two, he has deliberately avoided news about China. It's not that he has no feelings for China, or that he doesn't want to help the Chinese people who are suffering from the war, but because reality has made him clearly feel the insignificance and powerlessness of an individual in the face of the torrent of history.

In the crossings I have seen in my previous life, the protagonists are all talented people, and they can easily use the experience of later generations to seize the opportunity and change the course of world history.

But when he really stood in front of the tide of the times, John realized that there were too few places where he could help China. Even a lot of the time, he was inferior to an ordinary American. After all, ordinary people can still go to China to contribute to the war of resistance. If you can't go to the battlefield, you can take some photos, write some articles, and appeal for China in American newspapers.

As an important member of the Vanderbilt family, the boss of FedEx, a rising star of the Republican Party, and a senior officer in the U.S. Army, he could not even openly express his support for China when the United States was not at war. This sense of powerlessness made him learn from the ostrich and bury his head in the sand in order to escape reality.

However, this does not mean that John no longer cares about China. As long as he encounters the right opportunity, he will still try his best to contribute to the war of resistance. Today, for example, Roosevelt took the initiative to send him a good opportunity.

John sat there, quietly listening to Captain Davis' debriefing. Truth be told, Davis was not a good observer, and his reports were fragmentary, emotional, and intellectual. In many cases, it also carries the inherent prejudices and common sense errors of Westerners, and is far worse than his predecessor, Captain Evans Carlson (Roosevelt's former captain of the guard, who was commissioned by Roosevelt to go to China in 1937 to investigate the battlefield of resistance against Japan, and was the first American soldier to come into contact with ***** and other high-level Chinese Communist officials, and wrote "China's Double Stars").

John didn't intend to point out Davis' mistakes, though. He knew that it was Roosevelt's administrative assistant and economic adviser Laughlin Currie who was going to China as the president's representative to guide the implementation of Lend-Lease Act. As the White House's senior staff member in charge of formulating China policy, Currie's report is the most authoritative and effective. Davis was not just one of Roosevelt's many sources of auxiliary information.

This was Roosevelt's usual trick: to open up multiple channels of private information gathering in addition to the official information channels, so as to obtain more supplementary information to help him deepen his understanding of the situation and the inspiration for how to deal with it. But Mr. Donovan privately said that Roosevelt liked the reports because he used them for the most part. In other words, Roosevelt usually dismissed his private reports as gossip and travelogues.

Now, for example, Roosevelt was sipping coffee and muffins while listening to Davis's story of how he drove through the streets of Chongqing to escape the Japanese air raids.

"How are Chongqing's civilian air defense measures doing? Throughout the year, when I was in London, I saw them promoting a kind of home bomb shelter, and it seemed to work well. John finally seized the opportunity and began to lead the conversation in the direction of his own design.

"It's the kind of six pieces of corrugated steel." It was Hopkins who answered, "I also met in London and heard that they were going to build at least 2 million. ”

"Only a handful of wealthy families in Chongqing build their own bomb shelters. Most civilians evacuate to the outskirts when alerted. There are some large public tunnels in the city, but before we arrived in Chongqing, there was a mass suffocation that was shut down, and it is said that tens of thousands of people died at that time. ”

"Tens of thousands!" Both Roosevelt and Hopkins were intimidated by the figure. In 1941, there were only about 300,000 people in Washington, D.C. Suffocating one-thirtieth of a night is completely unimaginable to them.

"There are basically no ventilation, fire prevention, and anti-poison facilities in those air defense tunnels, and I heard that because the air defense siren sounded at 9 o'clock in the evening, the citizens did not have time to evacuate to the suburbs, so they all crowded into the tunnels. Later, because of the hot weather, there were many people in the tunnel and there was a lack of oxygen, so everyone squeezed out, and the gate of the tunnel was closed from the inside out, and the crowd could not be opened at all, and the result was either squeezed to death or suffocated. Davis told Roosevelt everything he had heard about the June 5, 1941, Chongqing tunnel massacre.

"Harry, we thought we should find some way to help those poor Chinese." Roosevelt put down the muffin in his hand and said to Hopkins.

Like most Americans today, Roosevelt and Hopkins had immediate sympathy and pity for the plight of the Chinese people. As soon as he said this, John knew that he had achieved half of his goal. Next, it will be up to him to win more support for China.