‘Devoted agent’ helped save Britain—book

Press, 28 June 1983, Page 11

‘Devoted agent’ helped save Britain—book

NZPA-Reuter London An obscure Canadian businessman working in secrecy was largely behind a lifeline of American hardware that saved Britain from Nazi conquest in World War 11, according to a book published yesterday. The man, Arthur Purvis, described by Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill as “our devoted agent,” struck deals worth billions of dollars for supplies vital to overstretched Britain in 1940 when German invasion seemed imminent. The role of the unflappable Purvis, an industrialist and explosives expert, is told in detail for the first

time in a new biography of “Churchill, Finest Hour,” by Martin Gilbert. Purvis set up a British Purchasing Mission in Washington in December 1939, two years before the United States went into the war, and worked closely with President Franklin Roosevelt and his senior aides until his death in a plane crash in August 1941. Together they circumvented American neutrality law to get vital rifles, bullets, tanks, planes and steel to Britain. Shipments arranged by Purvis left New Jersey ports by night unknown to either American isolationists or German U-boats. Only his secret telegrams

told Churchill’s inner circle what was coming. Each day from London, Gilbert writes, Purvis got word of British needs, transmitted them to those in Washington who could supply them, followed up each request with tenancity and smoothed over the problems which arose with tact and skill. Gilbert’s 1274-page work, the sixth volume of the official life of Churchill and covering 1939-41, details Churchill’s unremitting efforts to draw the United States into the war and Mr Roosevelt’s measured and sometimes covert steps to the same end. Shaving one morning, Churchill was asked by his

son Randolph how Britain could “beat the bastards.” Gilbert quotes Churchill as replying: “I shall drag the United States in.” He told a War Cabinet meeting shortly before Japan attacked Pearl Harbour: “We must have an American declaration of war.” Churchill, whose mother was American, also showed wariness of the United States, in spite of his affection for Mr Roosevelt. He told his private secretary, John Colville, he feared that “America’s love of doing good business may lead them to denude us of all our resources before they show any inclination to be the good Samaritan.”