HOW ABOUT THE BILLIONS IN LEND-LEASE DEBTS?
Netboy, Anthony
How About The Billions In Lend-Lease Debts? By ANTHONY NETBOY BY Apr. 1, 1945, about 5 weeks before V-E Day, the United States had made available to its Allies under Lend-Lease, goods and services...
...Total figures by countries are not given in the Foreign Economic Administration reports on Lend-Lease...
...Soviet Russia also has the wherewithal to pay...
...We may estimate however, on the basis of certain published figures that Russia received a total of about 9 billion dollars in American aid up to Apr...
...true self-rule, and a chance to rise from the abject poverty into which they are now cast...
...There is another way to implement Article VII of the Lend-Lease Agreements...
...Obviously, the Act is vague about the terms to which the beneficiaries of Lend-Lease shall be held...
...We could say to them: "We will be very generous in settling your Lend-Lease debts if you will make concessions to the peoples in your power so as to really promote world peace...
...But the American people, whenever they have had a chance to express an opinion, generally disagreed with him...
...Speaking concretely, this would mean that the British, French, Dutch, and Belgians would grant the native peoples of India, Rhodesia, the Belgian Congo, Malaya, Burma, the East Indies, etc...
...And 1 know high officials associated with the Lend-Lease program who privately regarded the mountains of foodstuffs, raw materials, guns, tanks, planes, and the thousands of ships turned over to the British, Russians, French, and Chinese Allies as simply gratuities contributed from Uncle Sam's bottomless treasure chest...
...for Lend-Lease aid, at least in raw materials, provided, of course, such payments would not hinder the vast trade with the U.S.S.R...
...President Roosevelt, you may remember, once declared somewhat incautiously that "the silly old dollar sign" ought to be erased from our minds in thinking about Lend-Lease...
...materials, and money in this global war helped the Britisli to retain their empire and possibly their very national existence, and made it much easier for the Soviets to drive the Nazi horde from their sacred soil...
...such as not to burden commerce between the 2 countries, but to promote mutually advantageous relations...
...Services rendered are bulked...
...India, and New Zealand 900 million dollars...
...The reverse Lend-Lease aid we received has come from the Lfnited Kingdom—2.4 billion dollars by June 30...
...They would encourage democracy everywhere...
...If the war drags on another year our total investment in Lend-Lease may add up to 50 billion dollars, perhaps more...
...How can they be translated into concrete terms ? The problem is beset with staggering difficulties, in the light of the seeming demand of our people for tangible returns for Lend-Lease...
...in return for aid furnished . . . the terms and conditions thereof shall be...
...But we did not formulate any concrete idealistic terms, merely the high-sounding generalities, embodied in Article VII...
...A Gallup Poll in November, 1943 showed substantially the same results...
...They can and do play ball with us only to the extent necessary to gain immediate ends...
...Dismissing, then, the sentimental "equality of sacrifice" principle, the only principle that we can adopt is that the settlement should be such as to help bring the world to a state of lasting peace and pros-parity...
...There was a time in 1941 and 1942, when England, Russia, France, Holland, and Belgium so desperately needed our help that they would have taken it on any terms laid down by us...
...The British are already pleading poverty and the inability to pay their World War II debts, although it seems, as a writer in the January, 1945, issue of The Nation's Business points out, that their overseas investments are still quite considerable—despite the fact that we were led to believe by President Roosevelt, when he started the ballyhoo for Lend-Lease back in December, 1940, that the British had almost entirely liquidated their overseas holdings and could no longer pay for American munitions...
...Over half the responses believed that America should get tangible returns...
...Should they be paid—in part or in whole...
...Total reverse Lend-Lease aid given to us amounts to 3.3 billion dollars at the last published accounting, June 30, 1944...
...That the United States should use this tool is, I am sure, the mandate of the majority of Americans, who believe in fair play and the right of all peoples to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...
...THE immediate ends—our material aid in their domestic reconstruction as well as support for the fragile security league set up at San Francisco—still give us a powerful tool for using Lend-Lease debtg actually (not theoretically) to promote world peace, and to bring a new deal to the misbegotten colonial peoples of the world...
...The Lend-Lease Act stipulates that: "The terms and conditions upon which any . . . foreign government receives any aid . . . shall be those which the President deems satisfactory, and the benefit to the United States may be payment or repayment in kind or property, or any other direct or indirect benefit which the President deems satisfactory...
...This would also mean that Soviet Russia would cease to undermine and liquidate the democratic elements in the countries that have come under her tutelage, and that a healthy policy of free governments freely elected would be pursued in all the vassal states...
...Queried as to how repayment should be made, they voted for goods, military bases, and gold, in the order listed...
...Hence it was probably, according to reasonable estimates, in the neighborhood of $5 to $6 billion by V-E Day...
...1944 and Australia...
...and the minor countries one billion...
...It is about time that we began thinking concretely about the answers to these questions...
...This idea, in fact, is implied in Article VII of the Master Agreements on Lend-Lease signed by our Government with Great Britain, the U.S.S.R., China, and some of the minor countries: "In the final determination of the benefits to be provided to the United States of America...
...It is conceivable that he might declare, since the Russians, for example, lost so many more men in the war than we did, and the Britisli civilians suffered so much more physical and spiritual hardships than American civilians did, that this has been payment enough for the Lend-Lease aid they received...
...This would be at least 5 times as much as America's loans to its Allies during World War 1. HOW can Lend-Lease debts be paid...
...THUS, the Office of War Information in the Summer of 1943 in one of its opinion polls asked the following question: "If England and Russia continue to do all they can to help us defeat the Axis, do you think that is enough repayment for the Lend-Lease supplies we sent...
...on which American businessmen are counting in the difficult postwar era ahead...
...The President, if he wishes, can be superlatively magnanimous...
...Now, with the Nazi menace liquidated, our Allies are rather haughty and independent...
...the British Empire about $28 billion : China perhaps as much as one billion ; France another billion...
...only statistics on goods shipped...
...Unfortunately, the use of our Lend-Lease credits to promote such idealistic ends does not seem to be among the cards our diplomats have been playing...
...To that end, they shall include provision for agreed action . . . directed to the expansion, by appropriate international and domestic measures, of production, employment, and the exchange and consumption of goods, which are the material foundations of the liberty and welfare of all peoples...
...These are noble generalities...
...That is, to use6urs vast moral and fiscal credit with our Allies in such a way as to get them to carry out a policy leading to the end of imperialism and the exploitation of foreign peoples...
...At that time, as anybody who dealt with the foreign supply missions in Washington knows, the Allied governments were humble and submissive because they realized that the guns, planes, tanks, ships, raw materials, foodstuffs, etc., which Lend-Lease could give them in ever-rising quantities meant the difference between impending defeat and annihilation as national entities and ultimate victory...
...Russia has given us little or nothing...
...1, 1945, about 5 weeks before V-E Day, the United States had made available to its Allies under Lend-Lease, goods and services valued at approximately 40 billion dollars...
...Such thinking stems from "the equality of sacrifice" principle which has pervaded our official Lend-Lease reports and was used at times as an apology for the mounting aid given to our Allies, and the shortages this has caused in essential civilian supplies...
...The new Secretary of State ought to take this mandate to heart—and use it not only in Lend-Lease matters but in our foreign policy generally...
...Clearly, if these polls are an accurate sample of American thinking, our people will refuse to write off the 50 billion dollars or more invested in Lend-Lease, especially those who believe that our sacrifices of men...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 31
