SHIPS FOR BRITAIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 December 1940, Page 7

SHIPS FOR BRITAIN

AMERICA TO RELEASE THOUSANDS OF TONS PRESIDENT TAKING PERSONAL HAND. NEW VESSELS BEING BUILT. (By Telegraph—Press Associaiton—Copyright) WASHINGTON, Deiember 3. The United States will shortly release thousands of tons of merchant shipping to Britain. It is planned to release every seagoing ton the country can spare. President Roosevelt is taking a personal hand in the scheme, and he discussed the question at length with responsible officials before his departure for the Caribbean defence zone. , The Maritime Commission has approved the sale of four additional vessels to Britain, and the commission plans to offer fox’ sale 15 units of the laid-up fleet within a few days. Every consideration is to be given to British offers. Sixty-three vessels remain of the special fleet that was built toward the end of the last war. A high Administration official today said, “We are making every effort to see that the British get more tonnage. PROPOSED LOAN ON SECURITY OF GOLD .PRODUCTION. NEW YORK, December 3. The “Herald-Tribune” state that Mr. Mariner Stoddard Eccles, prominent financer and banker, at a meeting of bankers, industrialists and economists, proposed that a loan be made to Britain o'f 2500 million dollars against the security of a lien on the Empire’s gold production for five years, thus sterilising such gold and preventing it from inflating the United States bank reserves.