LEND AND LEASE POLICY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 April 1941, Page 6

LEND AND LEASE POLICY

AXIS PRECEDENT IN SPAIN. However little the Germans may like President Roosevelt’s new scheme for “lending" the weapons and munitions of war to Britain, an overseas writer observes, they ought to find themselves a little handicapped in the matter of protest by the fact that they themselves may be said to have had a very large share in developing that particular form of “neutrality” and vigorously thrusting its conception into the existing framework of international relations. Except that American assistance for Britain has not as yet gone quite so far, it bears a remarkably strong rescmhblance to the system of “non-intervention" as practised by Germany and Italy during the Spanish Civil War. Omitting for the present the question of troops. Franco received from the Nazis and the Fascists the most generous “loans" of aeroplanes, tanks, guns and equipment of all kinds; and if Nazis could do that without officially “intervening” in the Spanish struggle, it would be hard to deny the United States the right to bestow similar assistance on Britain. No doubt Hitler, Goebbels and company will vigorously challenge that right, for lying rather than logic is their specialty. But in the eyes of the wider world they will once again look somewhat fatuous as well as baffled if they begin to protest against the application of a system which they themselves once did so much to exploit.