LEND-LEASE LIMITS

Waikato Times, Volume 193, Issue 22189, 8 November 1943, Page 4

LEND-LEASE LIMITS

AMERICAN REPORT CRITICAL WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 A demand that the Allies should furnisn greater quantities of reverse lend-lease material and that they should be compelled to use to the maximum their own resources before asking for American aid was made by the Truman Committee in a report on post-war industrial transition problems. The committeee stated that lendlease was never intended as a device to shift Allied war costs to the United States. The report recommended that the United States should—

(1) Consider immediately future world rubber problems and guard against being again the victims of a plan like the British one of the 1920’5, “when we were forced to pay exorbitant prices for rubber and at the same time being called Shylocks by the English press for requesting war loan payments. (2) That the United States should ascertain immediately whether Britain should pay for American lend-least petrol by transferring her ownership of tne equivalent value of foreign petroleum reserves or British-held securities in such reserves. Acquisition nf Rights (3) The United States should determine the possibility of acquiring rights in deposits of British-owned nickel, copper, tin and iron resources outside England and the right to receive manganese from Russia after the war in return for present lend-lease. The commiUee said Britain had not only failed to build up adequate stocks of rubber but through the Anglo-Dutch controlled international rubber regulations hindered American efforts to obtain an American stock at moderate costs. « “American foreign trade will depend upon the policies we adopt respecting lend-lease and rehabilitation,” says the report. “Every effort should be made to reduce the cost to American taxpayers to the minimum.”

The report recommends the Government to begin immediately with the conversion of some industries from war production to essential civilian goods, even peacetime supplies. The committee suggests that inventories of war materials should be reduced to a minimum so that civilian markets will not be flooded with Go\ ernment-owned goods as previously. Government activities should be confined strictly to banking and should not be used as a vehicle to place the Government in business. ________________________