LEND-LEASE: A ONE-SIDED REPORT

...Lend-Lease money has helped to build railroads in Iran, oil wells on the Persian Gulf, docks in India, assembly plants in Egypt, and housing facilities for workers on the shore of the Red Sea...

...Lend-Lease was proposed by the President in December, 1940, and illustrated with his famous simile about lending one's neighbor a hose to help put the fire out...

...All the superb construction by the Army could have been done just as well if the appropriations had remained under the War Department...

...Dramatic and literary reports to the people are the opposite of the usual factual reports by Government agencies, which Congress examines intensively, to see how much money has been spent, and whether the executive has kept within the powers conferred by law...

...Stettinius repeats the statement that it is not possible to reduce Lend-Lease to arithmetic...

...The choice between dramatic "reports to the people" and factual reports to Congress goes to the heart of free government...

...Six days later the President allocated this amount to the Secretary of War," he adds, to establish air ferry services...

...That one small change made the Federal Government the principal outlet for the agricultural and industrial products of the nation...

...The second Lend-Lease program has no definite agency form...

...Packard, General Motors, and Nash-Kelvinator are among a long list of firms whose plants were built or equipped with the aid of Lend-Lease money...

...LEND-LEASE money has also gone into industrial investment...

...Is this the point where the Lend-Lease powers proved elastic enough to permit the United States Government to construct Lend-Lease facilities it need not transfer to other nations...

...The first impact of Lend-Lease fell upon the farmers...

...The second is a new domestic spending program which greatly increases governmental control over the "commanding heights" of our economy...

...Such "credits" the Administration is free to spend again without the approval of Congress...

...The work was done by the Army Air Force, the civilian air lines, and the Army Engineers...

...The best way to get an open, frank, and generous statement of any policy is to divide it up into several parts, under able men, and let them tell frankly what they know...

...Instead of outright repeal of the cash-and-carry law, thus letting foreign countries do their own purchasing.here,.the new law provided that the American Government was to do all their purchasing for them...

...Stettinius say they were transferred to foreign nations...

...Nowhere does Mr...

...O'Mahoney, Wyoming Democrat, has said, "the global shape of things to come...

...Obviously not all of them were...

...Foreign aid is stressed, and domestic investment is kept in the shadow...

...Of reverse Lend-Lease, Mr...

...No criticism is implied of Mr...

...The book is a carefully chosen collection of human interest stories, beautiful blue charts, and subtle suggestions, which build in people's minds a friendly response to Lend-Lease spending...

...Operations under the Act are carried on on two levels, one for goods transferred to other nations, and one for construction or financing of industrial plants, transportation facilities, airports, and training centers that remain in possession of the American Government...

...Lend-Lease has $25 billions given direct to the President, and $44.5 billions which he can transfer to Lend-Lease from War and other appropriations...

...THE second Lend-Lease fund is much more concerned with American domestic policy than with the war...

...Stettinius' book is now clear...

...The papers recently reported a brief item that withdrawal of Lend-Lease orders was followed by "panic" selling on the hog market...

...The new form is the administered economy of Alvin Hansen and Charles Merriam, in which Congress is allowed a veto power—over a fait accompli...

...But reverse Lend-Lease is paid into the Lend-Lease account and spent again by American Government departments without new Congressional approval...

...Stettinius tells how the first requisition, for an air ferry service to Canada, was filed by the British in June, 1941, for $31 millions...

...But who owns this world network of air lines...

...But England and Russia are probably being charged for use of these lines...

...This question is of the essence of the second Lend-Lease program...

...Stettinius...

...Is it a sacrilege for Congress to inquire how much money Government departments can spend twice because of Lend-Lease...

...it also made Lend-Lease the most important force in internal planning and postwar reconstruction...

...He was never responsible for the second Lend-Lease program...

...The full story of Lend-Lease is known only to men higher in the Governmental hierarchy than Mr...

...The real importance of Mr...

...That is, it is a substitute for a report to Congress...

...The Office of Lend-Lease Administration (or OLLA) was created in mid-1941, to transfer materials to allied governments, and Mr...

...It is a "report to the people...

...Does this mean that War Department construction can be transferred to a new legal "pocket" by debiting it to Lend-Lease...

...This is the "power of the purse" by which alone the people know that their money will be spent as they decide...

...The book does not say...

...His book tells nothing, however, of Lend-Lease as a $69 billion fund which the President can use for any purpose whatever, at home or abroad, in war or postwar, and which is already giving us, as Sen...

...Lend-Lease money helped to build the great Ford bomber plant at Willow Run, the Chrysler tank arsenal in Detroit, and Kaiser's Per-manente shipyards, at Richmond, Calif.," says Stettinius...

...STETTINIUS has written a colorful account of the work of transferring $20 billions of war supplies to England, Russia, and India...

...But his book deserves careful study by all interested in seeing how a people may be conditioned to a new form of governmental accounting for public funds...

...It operates, as a cluster of powers and funds, through the purchasing agencies of the Treasury Department, the War Food Administration, and the Army Service Forces, and is coordinated by Harry Hopkins, the President's assistant, through the Munitions Assignment Board and other international agencies...

...If they remain in Federal hands, but are transferred from the War Department to the Lend-Lease account, all these facilities all over the world come under the broad powers conveyed by the Lend-Lease Act, that is, the President can use them for any purpose he believes will aid the defense of the United States, or exchange them for any goods on any terms he wishes...

...Stettinius in this emphasis on the material that is omitted from his book...

...Congress has not been able to get information on Lend-Lease operations...

...One of the most dramatic achievements of the war has been the knitting together of airways that connect the United States with Brazil, Africa, the Near East, and even Russia and India...

...The high "food production goals" were Government orders through Lend-Lease, and the support of farm prices was "price-formation" through Lend-Lease, even though it was still operated through the familiar Federal farm agencies...

...Stettinius was made its first administrator just before, as he innocently explains, it was necessary to ask Congress for more money...

...The only difference lies in the postwar control of assets...

...The first is the original program for lending munitions to anti-Axis nations that is the popular idea of Lend-Lease...

...The work of expanding our airplane and machine tool plants is a stirring tale, but what is the economic and legal status of these capital expenditures...

...Part of the "cost" of British Lend-Lease may be "income" for American Lend-Lease transport...

...This gives the Federal Government an investment fund that it can use in many different ways for the creation of postwar work, the control of foreign trade, orders for domestic production, or management of the transportation lines connecting us with the outside world...

...He stresses the familiar argument that Lend-Lease takes "only" five or 10 per cent of food production, but five or 10 per cent of food sales constitute the farmers' whole margin, and the power to give or withhold such purchasing power is almost a life-or-death matter for American producers...

...Obviously they were not all transferred to foreign governments...

...Stettinius says, "It would be impossible, indeed a sacrilege, to attempt to balance such a ledger...

...Stettinius tells of the human importance of eggs and cheese for England and Russia, but he makes no mention of the changes made at home, when the Government becomes the principal purchaser of farm products...