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APPROPRIATION BILL FOR 1942

HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
4.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

SEVENTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

ON THE

SECOND SUPPLEMENTAL NATIONAL DEFENSE
APPROPRIATION BILL FOR 1942

(INCLUDING DEFENSE AID-LEND-LEASE
APPROPRIATIONS)

63413

PART I

DEFENSE AID-LEND LEASE

Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations

UNITED STATES
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON: 1941

KF27 .Ab 1941e

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

CLARENCE CANNON, Missouri, Chairman

CLIFTON A. WOODRUM, Virginia
LOUIS LUDLOW, Indiana
MALCOLM C. TARVER, Georgia
JED JOHNSON, Oklahoma

J. BUELL SNYDER, Pennsylvania
EMMET O'NEAL, Kentucky
GEORGE W. JOHNSON, West Virginia
JAMES G. SCRUGHAM, Nevada
JAMES M. FITZPATRICK, New York
LOUIS C. RABAUT, Michigan
DAVID D. TERRY, Arkansas
JOHN M. HOUSTON, Kansas
JOE STARNES, Alabama

ROSS A. COLLINS, Mississippi
CHARLES H. LEAVY, Washington
JOSEPH E. CASEY, Massachusetts
JOHN H. KERR, North Carolina
GEORGE H. MAHON, Texas
HARRY R. SHEPPARD, California
BUTLER B. HARE, South Carolina
HARRY P. BEAM, Illinois

JOHN TABER, New York.

RICHARD B. WIGGLESWORTH, Massachusetts
WILLIAM P. LAMBERTSON, Kansas
D. LANE POWERS, New Jersey
J. WILLIAM DITTER, Pennsylvania
ALBERT E. CARTER, California
ROBERT F. RICH, Pennsylvania
CHARLES A. PLUMLEY, Vermont
EVERETT M. DIRKSEN, Illinois
ALBERT J. ENGEL, Michigan
KARL STEFAN, Nebraska

FRANCIS H. CASE, South Dakota
FRANK B. KEEFE, Wisconsin
NOBLE J. JOHNSON, Indiana
ROBERT F. JONES, Ohio

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Also participating on Defense Aid (Lend-Lease)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON WAR DEPARTMENT APPROPRIATIONS

Messrs. SNYDER (chairman), TERRY, STARNES, COLLINS, KERR, MAHON, POWERS, ENGEL, and CASE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NAVY DEPARTMENT APPROPRIATIONS

Messrs. SCRUGHAM (chairman), CASEY, SHEPPARD, BEAM, THOMAS, DITTER PLUMLEY, and JOHNSON (Ind.)

II

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

OCT 31 1941

SIGN OF BOCUMENTS

Amt 5 541

SECOND SUPPLEMENTAL NATIONAL DEFENSE
APPROPRIATION, 1942

HEARINGS CONDUCTED BY THE SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, IN CHARGE OF DEFICIENCY APPROPRIATIONS, MESSRS. CLARENCE CANNON (CHAIRMAN), CLIFTON A. WOODRUM, LOUIS LUDLOW, J. BUELL SNYDER, EMMET O'NEAL, GEORGE W. JOHNSON, LOUIS C. RABAUT, JOHN TABER, RICHARD B. WIGGLESWORTH, WILLIAM P. LAMBERTSON, AND J. WILLIAM DITTER; ALSO PARTICIPATING ON DEFENSE AID (LEND-LEASE), SUBCOMMITTEE ON WAR DEPARTMENT APPROPRIATIONS: MESSRS. SNYDER (CHAIRMAN), TERRY, STARNES, COLLINS, KERR, MAHON, POWERS, ENGEL, AND CASE. SUBCOMMITTEE ON NAVY DEPARTMENT APPROPRIATIONS: MESSRS. SCRUGHAM (CHAIRMAN), CASEY, SHEPPARD, BEAM, THOMAS, DITTER, PLUMLEY, AND JOHNSON (IND.) ON THE DAYS FOLLOWING, NAMELY:

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1941.

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL OF THE SECOND LEND-LEASE REPORT AND SUPPLEMENTAL ESTIMATE OF APPROPRIATION FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE, 1942

The CHAIRMAN. We will take up this morning House Document No. 374, containing a supplemental estimate of appropriations in the amount of $5,985,000,000 for operations under the Lend-Lease Act.

We will include in the record the President's letter of transmittal of the Second Lend-Lease Report, and his letter transmitting the Budget estimate, together with a copy of the Budget estimate. (The statements referred to are as follows):

The PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE.

The SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

I am submitting this report pursuant to Section 5 (b) of the Lend-Lease Act of March 11, 1941, which provides that the President report to the Congress every 90 days on the operations under that act.

The Lend-Lease Act was passed by the Congress just 183 days ago. One hundred and sixty-seven days ago, the Congress appropriated 7 billion dollars to carry out our national policy of giving every possible material assistance to the countries resisting aggression.

The effective expenditure of this large sum in furtherance of our announced policy has presented tasks of large proportions. We have surveyed the needs of the countries we are aiding. We have correlated this program of aid with the procurement programs of our own Army and Navy. We have arranged with our industries for the production of the great quantities of material involved.

The War Department, the Navy Department, the Treasury Department, the Agriculture Department, and the Maritime Commission are the agencies principally charged with the actual procurement of the supplies. They are now far along with their task.

1

Over 64 of the 7 billion dollars appropriated have now been allocated, upon the recommendation of these agencies, for specific materials and services. Their procurement machinery has been constantly at work, locating producers and placing contracts. Over 32 billion dollars of legal commitments have already been made. Contracts will soon be placed for the entire 7-billion-dollar appropriation.

Contracts have been placed and work has started on nearly a billion dollars of bombardment aircraft. New ways have been started and work is in progress for about one-half a billion dollars of new merchant shipping. New facilities to speed the production of guns, ammunition, and other defense articles have been started under contracts totaling about $262,000,000. Over $430,000,000 has been allocated, and over $250,000,000 has been obligated, for the purchase of milk, eggs, and other agricultural products.

Daily the aid being rendered is growing. Through the month of August the total dollar value of defense articles transferred and defense services rendered, plus expenditures for other lend-lease purposes, amounted to $486,721,838.

Food and steel and machinery and guns and planes have been supplied in increasing quantities. Agricultural commodities worth $110,606,550 have been transferred to the countries we are aiding. We have transferred to the United -Kingdom more than 44 million pounds of cheese, more than 54 million pounds of eggs, more than 89 million pounds of cured pork, more than 110 million pounds of dried beans, and more than 114 million pounds of lard. We have transferred to them more than 3 million barrels of gasoline and oil. We have sent them many tanks. Merchant and naval ships and other transportation equipment are being transferred in growing amounts.

A substantial number of cargo ships and tankers have been chartered to the use of those countries whose defense is vital to our own. Our yards are repairing allied merchant ships. We are equipping allied ships to protect them from mines; and we are arming them, as much as possible, against aircraft, submarines, and raiders.

We have also, by repairing and outfitting their warships, helped the British and allied navies keep clear the vital sea lanes upon which depends continued resistance to Axis piracy. The repair of the battleship Malaya and the aircraft carrier Illustrious are outstanding examples of this naval assistance.

Over the whole range of technical and material assistance required by modern warfare, we are, under the lend-lease program, rendering effective help. Important defense information is being supplied to Britain and the other nations fighting the Axis powers. Our technicians are instructing the Allies in the assembly operation and maintenance of the tools coming from our factories. Across the United States and across Africa our plane ferry service is linking the arsenals of America with democracy's outposts in the Middle East. On our airfields thousands of British pilots are being and will continue to be trained and already we are preparing a similar program to help the Chinese.

We have supplied equipment for the Yunnan-Burma Railroad and for the Burma Road in order to speed the flow of arms and materials to the heroic Chinese people. In addition to materials of war we are furnishing China with medicine and technical assistance to fight the ravages of malaria. A military mission has also been dispatched to China in connection with the supplying of lend-lease aid.

The $7,000,000,000 appropriated for purchasing defense articles has been available less than 6 months and actual transfers from these funds have necessarily been limited to articles which could be purchased in a finished state or produced in that time. The speed with which future lend-lease transfers will be made depends largely on the speed with which our industries deliver the goods. The rate of our production must be accelerated and every step to achieve that end must and will be taken.

These lend-lease deliveries are not, of course, the only materials which have been moving from our shores to the countries resisting aggression. Prior to the LendLease Act, large contracts were placed here by Great Britain and by other countries from their own resources. Deliveries under these contracts are moving across the sea along with lead-lease articles. The true measure of the volume of war supplies moving from our shores is reflected in our total exports. Thus, since the beginning of the war, about $4,400,000,000 worth of goods have been exported to the British Empire.

Figures alone cannot show the significance of our help. Americans may be justly proud of the way in which the tools they have forged are standing up when tested under fire. An American-made flying-boat spotted the Bismarck and

American-made bombers blasted the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, and they have helped make possible the great raids of the R. A. F. in the Battle of Germany. In the wars of the western desert, fighter planes from our factories are in the vanguard of the attack and hundreds of our tanks stand ready to help rout the Nazi scourge from the African continent.

The British Empire has received the bulk of our aid. But we have also extended assistance to the many other countries engaged in the same struggle. China and the Dutch East Indies are receiving ever-increasing quantities of supplies. The exiled governments of the countries under the Nazi yoke are sharing in the program. We are already outfitting Polish troops who are training in Canada for action overseas. We are also providing, directly or indirectly, aid for the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Greeks, the Belgians, and the Yugoslavs. We know that every group which yields to or collaborates with the Nazis makes our own defense that much more difficult. Likewise each group that resists Nazi aggression helps to keep the war from our own hemisphere.

The defense of the Western Hemisphere has been a prime consideration in our lend-lease program. Not only are we helping the European countries which stand athwart the Nazi path toward the Western Hemisphere, but we are also giving direct lend-lease aid to the countries of this hemisphere. We are strengthening' Iceland, where our troops and ships now stand guard over the approaches of the North Atlantic, and we have already embarked upon a comprehensive program of material aid to the countries of Central and South America to strengthen the common defense of our good neighborhood.

The gallant resistance of the Russian people has been of enormous help to all peoples resisting the Nazi war machine. It has completely upset the Nazi time schedule and has destroyed the myth of Nazi invincibility. We are using the energies of our Government to make available supplies which are urgently needed by Russia. By speeding deliveries and by arranging the quickest transportation of American materials, we are moving to strengthen the important Russian front. The Soviet Government's purchases here are being made with its own funds through its regular purchasing agency.

The people of the United States know that we cannot live in a world dominated by Hitlerism. They realize that there can be no real peace, no secure freedom until we have destroyed the evil forces which seek to work us woe. Through their chosen representatives, they have declared a firm and unalterable policy to. build up an impregnable defense for this hemisphere, and to furnish unstinted material aid to the countries fighting against Nazi aggression and tyranny.

We are not furnishing this aid as an act of charity or sympathy, but as a means of defending America. We offer it because we know that piecemeal resistance to aggression is doomed to failure; because the ruthless war machine which now bestrides the continent of Europe can be combatted only by the combined efforts of all free peoples and at all strategic points where the aggressor may strike.

The lend-lease program is no mere side issue to our program of arming for defense. It is an integral part, a keystone, in our great national effort to preserve our national security for generations to come, by crushing the disturbers of our peace.

To those peoples who are gallantly shedding their blood in the front lines of this struggle, we must offer not only a shield but a sword, not merely the means to permit the stalemate of protracted defense, but the tools of a final and total victory.

This country has evolved the greatest and most efficient industrial system in history. It is our task to turn the workshops of our industry into mighty forges of war to outbuild the aggressors in every category of modern arms. Only in this way can we build the arsenal of democracy.

On this task we are now engaged with ever increasing vigor.

Planes, tanks,

guns, and ships have begun to flow from our factories and yards, and the flow will accelerate from day to day, until the stream becomes a river, and the river a torrent, engulfing this totalitarian tyranny which seeks to dominate the world.

THE WHITE HOUSE,

September 11, 1941.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT.

THE WHITE HOUSE, Washington, September 18, 1941.

The SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. SIR: I have transmitted to the Congress the Second Report of operations under the Lend-Lease Act. This report indicates the increasing amount of material aid we are rendering to the democracies. Of the $7,000,000,000 appropriated 6

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