GLOOMY OUTLOOK

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 199, 23 August 1945, Page 5

GLOOMY OUTLOOK

SUBSISTENCE DIET Cancellation Of Lend-Lease Programme NEW YORK, Aug. 22. High Government officials expressed the opinion that the cancellation of the lend-lease programme virtually means a return to a bare subsistence diet in the coming winter in Britain, France, Belgium and other countries dependent on large shipments of lend-lease food.

It is pointed out that the pipeline through which tons of pork and other fats, oil, wheat and cereals were moved from Chicago to Europe has been broken, and that it would require months to establish complicated substitute machinery for feeding Europe. Regardless of whp.t relief and rehabilitation agencies do to feed and clothe European nations, it is added, the cessation of lend-lease means a return to potatoes and Brussels sprouts in Britain for more than a month and far worse conditions on the Continent.

The suddenness with which President Truman acted has led to considerable speculation in some Government quarters that difficulties are deliberately being thrown in the road of the new British Labour Government.

The Lend-Lease Administrator, Mr. Leo T. Crowley, has thrown open the vast resources of the American Export-Import Bank to Britain and other Allied nations to help them buy food and vital supplies denied to them by the end of lend-lease. Mr. Crowley said the bank would consider loans to allow countries to buy up lend-lease goods which had already been made or had actually left the factories. Arrangements were already in hand for a loan of 240,000,000 dollars (about £60,000,000) to enable France to buy nearly 30,000 railway wagons. Mr. Crowley recalled that he had recommended that 1,000,000,000 dollars should be set aside for Russia. As far as he knew no application for a loan had yet been received from Britain. The chairman of the War Investigation Committee of the Senate, Mr. James Reid, said that his committee intended making a searching inspection of lend-lease accounts. "It is a well-known fact," he said, "that these accounts are in a very confused state and they must be settled so as not to create any economic dislocations."