One More Locomotive

In three words -- "one more locomotive" -- Pierre Mendes-France, Minister of National Economy, dramatized the economic paralysis of a once great industrial nation.

"This is what we French can do," he said, "with one more locomotive only. We can put that locomotive on a run between the northern coal mines and the eastern industrial basin. . . . We could take enough coal with this one locomotive to make it possible for our iron industry to produce 4,000 tons more of iron each month. With one month's iron we can repair 25 locomotives. . . ."

France, whose fall in 1940 provided the strongest argument for passing the Lend-Lease Act, finally last week signed a Lend-Lease agreement. It did not follow the British and Russian models. Instead it provided for a loan of $2,575,000,000 to France for civilian supplies.

This was something new, done under the hitherto unused "3c" section of the Lend-Lease Act. Russia is now supposed to be negotiating for a $6,000,000,000 or $7,000,000,000 credit, some of it probably of the same kind. Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, after a sharp look at the French arrangement, postponed action on the Lend-Lease extension bill. Was this a new pattern for U.S. aid in postwar reconstruction? Getting the goods to France is another matter. In Washington last week Foreign Economic Administrator Leo T. Crowley announced that five ships had been added to the French allotment, bringing the total to 31. The military shipping load in both Atlantic and Pacific is probably about at peak. France may have to wait for shipping.

Psychological Minefield. It was high time for a French Lend-Lease agreement. In asking for "one locomotive," Minister Mendes-France had a very good case. The truck situation in France is critical, less than one-third of France's 16,000 locomotives survive--and most of them are working for the Allied armies. Said Mendes-France:

"It is very interesting. Never before in modern history has an industrial nation faced an almost complete breakdown of its transport. . . . We do not ask first for food or medical supplies, although we need them. We ask first for equipment. . . . You also are short of locomotives--but where else could one locomotive make so much difference?"

Even Washington last week began to admit the full extent of United Nations economic failure in Liberated Europe. WPB's forthright William Loren Batt declared that the current rate of supplies reaching France was about 10% of the rate under German occupation.

The Germans handled the occupied countries shrewdly. They distributed a minimum of food, they kept maintenance of railroads and factories to a minimum. But they provided enough food for men to work, enough maintenance to keep machines barely running, and they bought so much goods with funny money that France almost had a manpower shortage. The Germans not only got what they wanted but laid a psychological minefield for the Allied liberators.

In the process of liberation, France's transportation system was crippled. After long undermaintenance, France's machinery needed major repairs. And the Allied military effort prevented major diversions for repairs, fuel or raw material. In the Paris area half the workers were unemployed. Germany had kept Frenchmen reasonably well by making them work for her. But the Allies had not yet found a way to let France work, even for them.

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