THE PRESIDENCY: The Last Six Words

One night last week, as the first evening bombs began to fall on London, the Churchill Government ordered all British holdings of 164 specified issues of marketable U. S. securities sold immediately to the British Treasury. The order indicated that Britain was running short of U. S. exchange. Although only $780,000,000 in actual goods shipments moved to England in the war’s first twelvemonth, $2,500,000,000 in total orders had been placed in the U. S. by the British Purchasing Commission.

At week’s end the amiable, rumpled Marquess of Lothian, returning to his post after a visit to Britain, stepped off the Atlantic Clipper at LaGuardia Airport, a dispatch case in his hand, England’s problem on his shoulders. The British Ambassador told newsreels, reporters:

“The first half of 1940 was Hitler’s year. The second half, we think, is ours.

“There is no doubt of its being a hard war. Two hundred lives are lost daily in the bombing raids and 300 people are injured. . . . There has never yet been a nation as much at war as England is today. The whole country is a huge trench.

“Next year, too, we know will be long and hard. England will be grateful for any help. England needs planes, munitions, ships and perhaps a little financial help.”

The last six words dumped a new problem into Franklin Roosevelt’s lap. After five damp days away from the telephone on the yacht Potomac, the President had worked three days in the White House, then had traveled to Hyde Park House for a four-day weekend. There, the day before Lord Lothian returned, he had told the press that the question of advancing credits to Britain had not yet been considered by the Government.

How the Government had avoided considering it he did not say. He knew as well as the British that when Britain runs out of cash for buying cash & carry, aid to Britain will cease unless the U. S. offers a new kind of aid. That aid might take the form 1) of simply giving Britain arms, 2) of bartering Britain arms in exchange for other valuable considerations (as was done in the destroyer deal), 3) of loans to Britain. Of the alternatives, the last was the most likely. If so, the President didn’t let it worry him. He was looking better—his grey pallor of Armistice Day had given way to a healthier tone.

In Washington, most observers long since had given the lie to the President’s assertion that loans to Britain had not yet been considered. They believed that a primary Roosevelt request of the new January Congress would be repeal of the Johnson Act, which bars new loans to debt defaulters such as Great Britain. (Foregone conclusion, observers added, was swift passage of such repeal.) How could he avoid it, they asked? There were a dozen signs that aid to Britain was the foremost Administration policy.

Last week the cautious State Department was arguing with usually cautious Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, who was eager to freeze all German and Italian funds in the U. S. He pointed out: 1) all U. S. funds in Germany and Italy are already frozen in effect by currency controls, 2) freezing of Axis funds would also freeze the influx of funds for sabotage, espionage and propaganda, since all embassies and consulates would have to specify their expenses. At week’s end it looked as if action would follow soon. For the sake of “neutrality” British funds might be frozen too (but withdrawals freely allowed for arms purchases).

Lean-hipped, mild General George C. Marshall showed the Administration’s intentions by taking steps to release to England the right to prior purchase of 46 of the most powerful flying battleships now under construction: 26 four-engined B-24s (Consolidated Aircraft’s heavy bombers), 20 four-engined B-17Cs (Boeing Flying Fortresses). All are to be equipped with Sperry bomb sights, the U. S. military secret, supposedly able to land a bomb in a flowerpot from 30,000 feet. Retained, noted both General Marshall and the President, was the Norden bomb sight, which has made the Sperry obsolete.

The statistics made good reading to all Hitler-haters—Consolidated: weight, 20 tons; cruising range, 1,500-mile radius; speed, 300 m.p.h.; crew, nine; wing span, 110 ft.; engines, four 1,200-h.p. Pratt & Whitneys; bomb load, maximum five tons. Boeing: weight, 22 tons; cruising range, 1,500-mile radius; speed, 280 m.p.h.; crew, nine; wing span, 110 ft.; engines, four 1,200-h.p. Wright Cyclones; bomb load, maximum five and a half tons.

In return for giving Britain priority on the bombers, Britain was to help the U. S. 1) through a production bottleneck by turning over to the Army enough engines to equip 41 Flying Fortress-type bombers, 2) by granting facilities to U. S. Army observers to watch American-made bombers perform in combat flight over the British Isles. If big bombers are to be sent to Britain this year, it did not seem likely that they would be withheld next year—even if the U. S. has to lend Britain the money to buy them.