Sword into Plowshare

Monday, Jan. 17, 1944

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The torrent of Lend-Lease has apparently passed its peak. Month by month since August the flow of weapons, food and clothing to 33 Lend-Lease nations has steadily declined. Alternately, the stream of reverse Lend-Lease (TIME, Nov. 22) has just as steadily swelled, has already topped $1,174,900,000.

From the British Empire and North Africa, and to a lesser extent from Russia and China, raw materials in increasing quantities are coming into the U.S. To the nation which forged Lend-Lease as a new weapon for war, this busy two-way traffic has posed a new question. Will Lend-Lease form a new basis of world trade in peace?

Oil Bases. Last week, in his 13th Lend-Lease report to Congress, the President touched for the first time on the key role Lend-Lease may play in postwar commerce. He confidently indicated that the settlement of Lend-Lease balances will be a powerful lever: 1) to guarantee that the raw materials of the world will be available to all comers; 2) to reduce tariffs and other trade barriers.

With a sidelong look at the five globetrotting Senators and their worries over the U.S.'s shrinking oil supply (TIME, Oct. 25), the White House report stressed the assertion that such a postwar policy, for example, would give the U.S. adequate access to the oil of the world. Similarly, disposition of the globe-straddling United Nations air bases which the U.S. helped build, and which will be some of the prize plums of postwar commerce, would be a part of the final settlements. (The President did not give details of what that part might be.) How much would the U.S. stake be in those settlements?

In the first 33 months of Lend-Lease, the report showed that the U.S. had poured out $18,609,000,000, or 13.5 cents out of every dollar it spent for war. But the report also pointed up the decline in shipments. The passing of the peak gave the U.S. a breather. It could look back and see just how big a bite Lend-Lease had taken out of the U.S. economy.

Tanks & Locusts. This was measured, not by the President, but by white-thatched Edward R. Stettinius Jr., 43, who ran Lend-Lease from August 1941 until it merged with Leo Crowley's Foreign Economic Administration last September. Now Under Secretary of State, Stettinius this week published a fat, 358-page book, Lend-Lease: Weapon for Victory (MacMillan; $3). (Although he signed and sweated over it, the book is actually the joint effort of Stettinius and some 50 others in & out of Lend-Lease, with a final polish by professional writers.) Straightforward, barren of "inside information," the book offers the most comprehensive picture of Lend-Lease to date. It is jampacked with facts, big & little. Some of them:

¶By mid-'43, 13,000 planes were Lend-Leased. The greatest number went to Russia. Lend-Lease also accounted for 38 out of every 100 tanks the U.S. produced, $9 out of every $100 worth of machine tools, four out of every 100 bbl. of petroleum products.