Word: lende
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Under President Truman's signature, as required by the law, a routine quarterly report on Lend-Lease was sent to Congress last week. Newsmen pounced on one pregnant paragraph. It said, in part: "If a debt approaching the magnitude of $42 billion were to be added to the enormous financial obligations that foreign governments have incurred for war purposes . . . it would have a disastrous effect upon our trade with the United Nations and hence upon production and employment at home...
News tickers clattered out headline-making leads. Example (by the Associated Press): "President Truman notified Congress today that the $42,000,000,000 . . . should, in the main, be written off the books." A consequent headline (in the New York Herald Tribune]: PRESIDENT BIDS CONGRESS CANCEL LEND-LEASE DEBTS...
...England, which had been surprised and hurt by the President's abrupt termination of Lend-Lease (TIME, Sept. 3), housewives and editorialists joined in praise of the "generous gesture." At home the President's opponents at last had something to get their wisdom teeth into. Cried Ohio's Senator Robert Taft: "We are going to face many trade restrictions from England and other [countries], and Lend-Lease would have given us something to bargain with if the President hadn't so hastily given it all away...
...Dollars. Actually, the U.S. had given nothing away; nothing had actually been done at all. The President had not even asked Congress to forgive the debts. He had merely said that it would be unwise for the U.S. to insist on cash repayment of Lend-Lease obligations. And he had bolstered that point with a reference to the "disastrous political and economic consequences" of the U.S. policy on World War I debts. (As of Jan. 1, about $14.6 billions of World War I debts remained unpaid...
...Britain, hardest hit by Lend-Lease termination, may need $3 billion just for food and necessities...