Warships for Britain

One of the most important forms of aid which the U.S. is giving Britain was until last week practically a secret from the American people. Waterfront strollers (and every Axis consul who is on the job) have seen British warships putting into East Coast ports where there are U.S. Navy yards--putting in for supplies, overhaul, repairs of battle and storm damage. But only over the bellowing body of Secretary of the Navy Knox (see p. 41) could any paper mention any of them. So it remained for a higher authority to give the public an idea of how much was going on.

Last week the President of the U.S. set down for the public, in black & white, the gist of the known facts, and more besides. Said he (in a message to Congress accompanying his report on Lend-Lease operations--TIME, June 16): "Allied ships are being repaired by us. Allied ships are being equipped by us to protect them from mines, and are being armed by us to protect them as much as possible against raiders. Naval vessels of Britain are being repaired by us so that they can return quickly to their naval tasks."

Thus the President put on record the fact that the U.S. is fixing up British merchant ships as well as warships for the Battle of the Atlantic. Of the $4,000,000,000 of Lend-Lease aid to Britain so far allocated, only $26,856,000 is for "testing, reconditioning, etc." of ocean vessels, plus $13,918,880 for naval supplies and $7,611,000 for "services." But $26,000,000 can buy a lot of repairs and provide quickly many times as many ships for the Battle of the Atlantic as the same amount of money spent on new construction. For a seriously damaged battleship, cruiser, aircraft carrier or merchant ship is, until it has been repaired, no better than a ship sunk. And every ship restored to service before overburdened British shipyards could do so adds to Britain's strength for the interim as much as the outright gift of such a ship from the U.S.

For disclosing these facts, Mr. Roosevelt presumably got no bellows from Mr. Knox.

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