"Last Call for Lunch"

If most Washington observers were right, the Lend-Lease Bill last week took the shape in which it will finally pass. For all practical purposes, that shape was substantially unchanged from its original form. Amendments had been made by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but not one of them altered the intent of H.R. 1776. A total of 25 amendments had been proposed. Democratic committee members passed four, then reported out the bill which would put the disposal of all U. S. defense production in the hands of Franklin Roosevelt. The amendments: 1) The President must consult with the Chief of Staff of the Army or the Chief of Naval Operations before giving away any defense article not manufactured specifically for a friendly power.

2) The power bestowed upon him by the bill will automatically expire on June 30, 1943.

3) Nothing in the bill shall be "construed to authorize . . . convoying vessels by naval vessels of the United States."

4) The President must submit a report of his acts made under the bill to the Congress, at least every 90 days.

The only amendment which might inhibit the powers that the President had asked was No. 3. But Congress' refusal to "authorize" convoying did not prohibit the President from exercising an authority he already had under the Constitution. As Commander in Chief of the Army & Navy, he can send armed forces wherever he sees fit. That U. S. naval vessels might, in the end, have to convoy foreign merchant ships, in order to make sure that aid to Britain got to Britain, was a possibility over which opponents of the bill brooded.

Outside of Lindbergh isolationists, who saw the country careening into war, and out-&-out left-wing factions like the American Peace Mobilization group, which demonstrated noisily on the Capitol steps last week, opposition formed along partisan lines. Republicans, more distrustful of the man than of his position, were reluctant to grant Franklin Roosevelt another tittle of power. Substitute proposals were belatedly discussed. Most generally favored: a $2,000,000,000 credit to Britain which she could use on her own responsibility to purchase supplies. Proponents of the bill pointed out that such a device might spoil the coordination between U. S. and British procurement which the bill sought to improve.

Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee filed Cabinet Members Stimson, Hull, Morgenthau, Knox, who had all spoken before the House committee two weeks before. To the Navy's Knox, Lindbergh's statement that a peace might be negotiated without a victory on either side was "wild fancy." "Peace without victory is possible only when . . . the belligerents feel that the peace terms will be faithfully carried out by all parties." Only hope for U. S. peace, said Knox, was the defeat of Germany. Otherwise, the U. S. would eventually have to fight for control of the seas. By means "direct or indirect" the Nazis would invade the Western Hemisphere, he said. The best insurance for the U. S. was to rush aid to Britain through the expeditious methods of Lend-Lease.

Said the Army's Stimson: "The . . . emergency which aggressor nations have created . . . must be met . . . with the flexibility . . . which ample authority . . . alone can afford." The bill would permit the President to send immediately a small but vital supply of weapons from stock. Roosevelt had sent outmoded weapons to Britain to re-equip her Army after the disastrous evacuation from Dunkirk. Said Stimson: "It's very possible we're sitting here quietly today largely because that step was taken."

Like an air-raid siren through all the testimony sounded the need for haste. The British were running out of cash, declared the Treasury's Morgenthau. Since December all major British contracts had been held up. U. S. aircraft manufacturers would run out of British orders in April, unless Britain could issue new ones right away.

"It's about the last call for lunch," Stimson warned, "to carry out by non violent efforts the defense of our country. . . . We are buying -- not lending. We are buying our own security while we prepare. . . . We are buying time."

How much time the U. S. needed, or could get, was still problematical. One witness whom the Senate committee still waited to hear was Wendell Willkie.* Shocked and "astonished" by the devastation he was seeing on his tour of England, Willkie last week told the British: "No man could fail to be moved. ... I personally hope that, with such steadfastness, America gives you such material aid that you must win."

There was little doubt that the bill would finally pass (by 100 votes in the House, with only 15 against it in the Senate, observers said). But the earliest date which Washington predicted: March 1.

*Rumor, unconfirmed, was that Roosevelt had a job for him: coordinator of the Lend-Lease program.

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