W. Keith Hancock and Margaret M. Gowing

“ The persistent deficiency of supply made the American Service departments reluctant to release to the British, munitions and productive resources that they wanted for their own expanding forces. The same deficiency made some British departments reluctant to pitch their claims too high: if they placed too many new contracts in America, would not the Americans withhold from them the machine tools necessary for maximising their own maturing programmes at home? ”

“ It is the historian's task to study reality within a framework of time. The framework of the present study is March to December 1941. What reinforcement of their war-making power did the British derive from lend-lease during these nine months? The passing of the Act did not transform Britain into an island well furnished for war; America aspired to be the arsenal of democracy, but the aspiration was still far from achievement. The services rendered under lend-lease are measurable, first of all, in dollars. Fortunately for the historian, the Act did not altogether 'remove the dollar sign'. ”

“ Even in the darkest months of 1940 and 1941, the United Kingdom did not fight alone. The resisting European Governments found sanctuary in Britain, small bands of fighting Frenchmen, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians and Czechs took up battle stations with the British forces, while in their subdued homelands obstinate patriots tuned in to Big Ben and formed with each other those first conspiratorial groupings that grew later into the Resistance. ”

“ When in the game of "beggar my neighbour" all the cards belong to one player, that is the signal for the game to come to an end. The pack becomes worthless pasteboard: the fun is over.'
The economists who were attached to the United States Treasury no doubt saw these truths as clearly as Keynes did; but the Treasury according to British reports, insisted upon 'the psychological importance of the question' and argued that Britain must manifestly strip herself bare in order to strengthen the President's hand when he came before Congress with new proposals of financial aid. ”

“ Some Americans tried to persuade themselves that there was more in the barrel than the British pretended; as late as 28th November 1940, Lord Lothian reported them to be 'saturated with illusions that we have vast resources available that we have not yet disclosed and that we ought to empty this vast hypothetical barrel before we ask for assistance'. The United States Administration was fertile of suggestions to the British for stripping themselves bare. ”

“ While British soldiers, sailors and airmen were sheltering the still-surviving American peace, British orders were building up the strength that America's fighting services might someday be compelled to exert. ”

“ The aid requested was of two kinds: immediate aid, weapons that the Americans could deliver at once, action that they could take at once: long-term aid, the tasks that American industry would have to set itself if it were to provide, at some future date, the tools 'to finish the job'.
The demands for immediate aid, and the American response to them, cannot be discussed without some reference to the evolution of America's neutrality policy. Needless to say, no British historian is competent as yet to handle this topic with authority ”

“ Under these circumstances, British self-help was the most effective way of inducing American help. By the autumn, Lord Lothian was able to report that the Battle of Britain and London's toughness had inspired a renewal of American confidence in British nerve and strength. The policy of 'defending America by helping Britain' was now 'really representative of average American opinion, and for the first time the British became popular in America'. ”

“ More important still were the peculiarities—at that time not generally appreciated in Britain—of United States financial procedure. Whereas a 'vote' of money by the British Parliament represents the estimated expenditure upon a specific object within a single financial year, an 'appropriation' by Congress is not nearly so confined: quite frequently, it represents the whole estimated cost of a task that may take two or three years to complete. ”

“ In the summer and autumn of 1940 an American Service department, arguing that the building of the national defences must come first, might find itself supported by defeatists who said that there was no sense in sending machine tools to be bombed or captured in Britain, and by isolationists who believed that America should do nothing to offend Hitler. ”

“ The United Kingdom had to supply more than three quarters of the Empire's military manpower and an even larger proportion of the military equipment. [2]
From the time of Dunkirk, the British Government had made insistent claims upon the United States: self-help without stint or limit did not exclude, but rather encouraged the expectation of American help. As early as 15th May 1940, the Prime Minister had telegraphed to the President:
If necessary we shall continue the war alone, and we are not afraid of that. ”

“ The Malayan investments, he said, represented living personal enterprises, not an automatic flow of dividends: if the Americans took over the dividends they would have to take over the enterprises, together with responsibility for the territories in which the enterprises were situated: otherwise the flow of production would dry up. ”

“ Should she fall under this attack, the United States might not find time to complete their own preparations. The Prime Minister reiterated the urgent need for American help at sea—strategic help, through the transfer of American warships or the reassertion of the American policy of freedom of the seas, and industrial help, in the form of a ship-building drive comparable with the Hog Island programme of the last war. Industrial help was hardly less indispensable in the sphere of air and army production. ”

“ Such misgivings, it is true, had not deterred Lord Beaverbrook from telling the Americans in July that he would—on top of existing contracts—take all the aircraft they could produce up to 3,000 a month; but even he had to swallow the consequences of his forthrightness: he found himself compelled to compromise on machine tools whose delivery had been already stipulated under the Anglo-French contracts. ”