That summer, I was teaching at Columbia and Szilard came to me one day. “Can you drive me out to the end of Long Island to see Einstein?” You know, Szilard was very ingenious and could do anything except drive a car. And furthermore, he had false hopes that I would be a good driver. At any rate, I got him to Einstein. He invited us to a cup of tea, and Szilard took a letter out of his pocket, and Einstein read it carefully and signed it, and made one relevant remark. “This is the first time,” he said, “we would get energy directly from the atomic nucleus, rather than from the sun, which got it from the atomic nucleus.” He handed the letter back to Szilard, and that was the second of August. The rest is known to everybody. I had played my essential role as Szilard’s chauffeur. Szilard gave the letter to an acquaintance of his who knew the President — who knew Roosevelt. The letter was signed on the second of August, a little more than four weeks before Hitler invaded Poland. The delivery of the letter was slow, but it got there, circumventing any interference by secretaries. And FDR saw it, end of October, after Hitler and Stalin defeated — and divided between themselves — Poland. The letter said the science is there. Nuclear explosives can be made, and the Germans were the first to know about it, they discovered it. I cannot think of a time where such a letter could have made more of an impact on Roosevelt than the time when he actually got it. He immediately issued orders and we got going.