War & Peace Quote by Stuart Symington

It lands as a businessman’s punchline, but the joke is doing bureaucratic violence. When Symington says the Administration wanted him to “actually sell all remaining surplus” via the War Assets Corporation, he’s pointing at the postwar American paradox: Washington could win a world war, then choke on the inventory. “Surplus” sounds tidy, almost mathematical; in reality it meant warehouses of half-obsolete equipment, factories needing conversion, contracts that had to be unwound without detonating jobs or prices. The word “actually” is the tell. It implies that government plans often hover at the level of memos and mandates, while the real work is grimy, local, and transactional.

“Some shoe leather” is a deliberately unglamorous metaphor, and that’s the subtext: you don’t liquidate a wartime economy from behind a desk. You go see people, haggle, inspect, travel, take political heat. The line smuggles in a critique of armchair administration - not ideology, just operational impatience. Symington frames himself as willing but practical, the kind of executive who needs authority, staff, and time on the ground. It’s also a quiet flex: he’s signaling that he knows the difference between ordering a sale and making one.

Context sharpens the intent. War Assets agencies were notorious for patronage, confusion, and the temptation to dump goods too fast (hurting markets) or too slow (feeding waste). Symington’s quip draws a boundary between public intention and private-sector execution, casting “shoe leather” as the missing ingredient the state chronically underestimates: attention, friction, and sweat.