Henry Stimson, preparedness, and codebreaking

Henry Stimson came to the conference as Herbert Hoover's secretary of state after earlier serving as secretary of war. During the First World War he tried to join Theodore Roosevelt's proposed volunteer force, then entered the regular US Army and rose to colonel by August 1918. The episode reads his record as that of a statesman who preferred peace but believed the country should commit fully once war began. His decision to close the State Department's cipher bureau followed a belief that diplomatic codebreaking violated gentlemanly conduct. That choice links personal ethics to a serious loss of intelligence capability.