Britain Endeavouring To Buy “ Refugee ” Ships

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 122, 24 May 1941, Page 7

Britain Endeavouring To Buy “ Refugee ” Ships

IN U.S.A. AND LATIN AMERICA Received Midnight. WASHINGTON, May 22. It is authoritatively stated that Britain is negotiating with Latin American nations for purchasing a hundred refugee foreign merchantmen in Latin American ports. Similar negotiai tions have been opened between the British Purchasing Mission and the United States Maritime Commission, whereby. Britain Hopes to obtain some merchant tonnage when* the United States formally requisitions 84 foreign ships at present under surveillance. President Roosevelt, in a letter to Senator Land, chairman of the Maritime Commission, said: "If we are going to keep from our shores the forces which have convulsed the Old World and now menace the new the job will be done largely by warships and the sailors and workers who build them. "If they fail the whole effort fails. I know the effort will not fail and that more and faster ships can tfe built and manned by trained American seamen and that they will carry through the open waters of the seven seas the implements which will help to destroy the menace to free peoples everywhere."