Gibert F. White
Q: Continued to work with them a bit?
A: I served on their committees. It wasn't until after I left Haverford that I
became chairman of its board.
Q: And did you get involved then with some of the refugee problems in Europe
which the Service Committee was still involved in after World War II?
A: Yes. I was on the first mission of the American Council of Voluntary
Agencies that went into Germany after the end of the war. There I met
Lucius Clay again, whom I first met when he was a captain in the Corps of
Engineers. We went in as the representatives of civilian groups, looked into
what was the condition of the German civilians at that time, wrote a report
that infuriated Lucius.
Q: I gather you found that civilians were not living in a style to which they'd
been accustomed.
A: Well, they were not living in a style in which he said they were living. And
as a result of this report he did reluctantly give permission for civilian
agencies to carry on relief work in Germany. So I found myself having been
detained by the Germans and dealing with refugees from the Germans during
the war, and trying to help the Germans themselves at the end of the war.
Q: While you were at Haverford College did you also maintain ties with people
back in Washington?
A: Yes, I did. I tried to keep a hand in on some of the activities in Washington
or in the United Nations that were relevant to what I'd been doing before. I
served on one of the task forces for the Hoover Commission on Executive
Organization.
Q: This would have been the first or second one?
A: The first, in 1948. And I was vice chairman of the President's Water
Resources Policy Commission under Truman in 1950.
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