But the job was done! Success was not due to the formal structure of the Office of War Information (see charts V, VI). No administrative formula could have transcended such governmental confusion. It was owing to the fact that all the people just described--who went around, with the best will in the world most of the time, minding one another's business--did in the end achieve effective results. The common denominator behind them was not the authority of the President, the discipline of the Democratic Party, or the casually designed, casually overlooked formal lines of authority. The common denominator was American civilization itself. Had we been deeply disunited, this ramshackle structure would have collapsed into chaos. But there was broad concurrence, a sense of cooperativeness, good will and good temper. A German, Russian or Japanese bureaucrat would have gone mad in the wartime mazes of the Federal system; a Chinese would probably have felt very much at home, but would have polished up the titles and honorifics a little. The difference between our governmental organization and that of our enemies lay in the fact that to us the T/O were something that could be used when convenient, and could (without breach of faith or law) be short-circuited when convenient. Word was passed around, material exchanged, coordination effected in ways which could not be shown on any imaginable chart. It was neither a merit nor a defect, but simply an American way of doing things. This characteristic has the effect, however, of making after-the-fact studies quite unrealistic. There is not much from the formal records and the formal charts which conveys the actual tone of governmental operations in terms of propaganda. Study of World War II organization for the sake of research and planning against possible future war would not be very profitable unless it delved into the concrete experience of individuals. The formal outlines mean nothing; they are positively deceptive unless the actual controls and operations are known. (Mr. Warburg makes it plain in his book that he thinks little of Mr. Elmer Davis' conception of his job; but he does not mention that Mr. Sherwood, theoretically Mr. Davis' subordinate, ran foreign operations without much reference to Mr. Davis or to any other part of the Federal government. Since Mr. Sherwood was closer to the White House than was Mr. Davis, this important consideration escapes being recorded on the chart: foreign operations were actually autonomous.[35]) Examples of how things really worked--as opposed to how they looked as though they worked--could be multiplied forever; but the soundest way of finding out sober, judicious opinion will necessarily await the writing of autobiographies and memoirs by the people concerned.