"The British Are Coming"

This week Congress began to argue the proposed $3,750,000,000 loan to Britain. The subject was touchy. It could touch off almost any firecracker in a politician's handy hoard of firecrackers. It also touched a great many knotty economic problems. But no one had to wonder whether politics or economics would make the most or the loudest talk.

Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes gamely wrestled with social science at a Foreign Policy Association dinner in Manhattan. Said he:

"We take for granted the interdependence ... of the wheat farmer of the Dakotas, the cotton grower of the Carolinas or the market gardener of California [with] the miner in Pennsylvania and the manufacturer in New York. . . . The interdependence of the world economy is less apparent. But it is quite as real.

"Britain's difficulties in returning to normal economic intercourse are of direct concern to us.... If the loan is approved, we can look ahead ... to a general reduction of tariffs ... a loosening of the grip of cartels and combines on world commerce.

"We in the United States cannot reach and maintain the high level of employment we have set as our goal unless the outlets for our production are larger than they have ever been in peacetime."

Opponents of the loan dug less deep and had more fun. Colorado's Senator Edwin C. Johnson took to the radio to shout: "Billions for the relief of starving children but not one cent of American taxpayers' money for the relief of empires!"

On the same national hookup, Montana's Senator Burton K. Wheeler added: "If we have $4,000,000,000 more to give away, let us turn our attention to the United States, where ... we have millions of veterans coming back . . . and slums all over. . . . First of all I am thinking of the United States of America."

Representative Karl Stefan of Nebraska called in the House for a "modern Paul Revere to warn that the British are coming."

The U.S. public would hear a lot of such talk in the weeks to come.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.