Untitled

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 194, 15 May 1944, Page 4

There may 'be a great deal involved in the condition which the United States Senate has attached to the extension of the Lend-Lease plan for another year. It has forbidden the President to make “any post-war economic or military commitments in connexion with lend-lease settlements. In the original agreement made with the British Government, and accepted as applicable to New Zealand, the President bad power, in the final determination of benefits, to take full cognizance of property, services, tion, facilities or other benefits provided by other Governments to the Liiitei States. There was also an article (No. 7) which has come to be regarded as of exceptional importance. Under it the respective Governments, m the final determination of benefits, agreed that “the terms and conditions shall be such as not to burden commerce between the two countries but to promote mutually advantageous economic relations between them and the betterment of world-wide' economic relations.” The amendment now adopted will restore to the Senate its former control of international ngteements, and the terms of settlement of lend-lease operations apparently will not he those “accepted or acknowledged by the President on behalf of the United States of America,” but those laid down by whatever party happens to control the Senate. The change is not without its importance to this Dominion. . .