MERCHANT SHIPPING PLAN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 5 December 1940, Page 5

MERCHANT SHIPPING PLAN

EVERY SPARE U.S. TON FOR BRITAIN Valuable Assistance as U-Boat Menace Grows PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S PERSONAL INTEREST

[United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright] (Received sth December, 10.30 a.m.) WASHINGTON, 4th December. The United States will shortly release thousands of tons of merchant shipping to Britain. It is planned to release every seagoing ton the country can spare. President Roosevelt is taking a personal hand in the scheme, and he discussed the question at length with responsible officials before his departure for the Caribbean defence zone. The Maritime Commission has approved the sale of four additional vessels to Britain, and the commission plans to offer for sale 1 5 units of the laid-up fleet within a few days. Every consideration is to be given to British offers. Sixty-three vessels remain of the special fleet that was built toward the end of the last war. A High Administration official to-day said, “We are making every effort to see that the British get more tonnage.” PROPOSAL OF LOAN The “Herald-Tribune” states that Mr Mariner Stoddard Eccles, prominent financier and banker, at a meeting of bankers, industrialists and economists, proposed that a loan be made to Britain of 2500 million dollars against the security of a lien on the Empire’s gold production for five years, thus sterilising such gold and preventing it from inflating the United States bank reserves.