I learned from the example of my father that the manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.

Covington & Burling often dealing with international legal issues before Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed him Undersecretary of the United States Treasury in 1933. S. His mother Eleanor Gertrude Gooderham was a Canadian-born granddaughter of prominent Canadian distiller William Gooderham (1790–1881) founder of the Gooderham and Worts Distillery.

He also persuaded Truman to dispatch aid and advisors to French forces in Indochina though in 1968 he finally counseled President Lyndon B. Johnson to negotiate for peace with North Vietnam. Truman from 1949 to 1953 he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War.