U.S. AID FOR BRITAIN

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23203, 14 December 1940, Page 11

U.S. AID FOR BRITAIN

JOHNSON ACT AND LOANS TREASURY SECRETARY’S STATEMENT (U*IT*D PRESS ASSOCIATE)* —OOFIRIOST.) (Received December 13, 7.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, December 12. The Secretary to the United Treasury (Mr Henry Morgenthau, jun.) said that Britain had not asked for a loan. Furthermore, the Treasury considered that the spirit of the Johnson Act forbids a loan should Britain request it. He admitted that lawyers might find a loophole in the act making it technically legal for the United States to lend to Britain. “I would certainly not be a party to a loan to Britain or any country if it comes under the Johnson Act, without Congressional direction,” he said. Mr Alfred Landon, who was the Republic nominee for the Presidency of the United States in 1936, urged the United States to subsidise British war

purchases and extend the ’working week in order to help defeat Herr Hitler, but he said he was opposed to sending ships into the war zone. Mr Winthrope W. Aldrich, chairman of the Chase National Bank in New York, urged prompt and generous financial aid for Britain before England’s financial sands run dangerously low.

“If the pledge of both political parties favouring every aid to Britain short of war means anything, it means that the full industrial and financial strength of the United States shall be thrown

into helping England,” he said. Let us meet the issue head on without suberfuge, without evasion, and put it directly to Congress to provide Britain with the funds she needs in the near future, which would be able to be furnished by a Federal guarantee of a British credit loan from the United States Treasury or an outright grant. The acting Republican leader, Mr Warren Austin, said that the Neutrality Act should be revised to permit American ships to return to free commerce on the high seas, and to permit the extension of monetary aid to Britain. ' *