Those Headlines

Under President Truman's signature, as required by the law, a routine quarterly report on Lend-Lease was sent to Congress last week. Newsmen pounced on one pregnant paragraph. It said, in part: "If a debt approaching the magnitude of $42 billion were to be added to the enormous financial obligations that foreign governments have incurred for war purposes . . . it would have a disastrous effect upon our trade with the United Nations and hence upon production and employment at home."

News tickers clattered out headline-making leads. Example (by the Associated Press): "President Truman notified Congress today that the $42,000,000,000 . . . should, in the main, be written off the books." A consequent headline (in the New York Herald Tribune]: PRESIDENT BIDS CONGRESS CANCEL LEND-LEASE DEBTS.

In England, which had been surprised and hurt by the President's abrupt termination of Lend-Lease (TIME, Sept. 3), housewives and editorialists joined in praise of the "generous gesture." At home the President's opponents at last had something to get their wisdom teeth into. Cried Ohio's Senator Robert Taft: "We are going to face many trade restrictions from England and other [countries], and Lend-Lease would have given us something to bargain with if the President hadn't so hastily given it all away."

Not in Dollars. Actually, the U.S. had given nothing away; nothing had actually been done at all. The President had not even asked Congress to forgive the debts. He had merely said that it would be unwise for the U.S. to insist on cash repayment of Lend-Lease obligations. And he had bolstered that point with a reference to the "disastrous political and economic consequences" of the U.S. policy on World War I debts. (As of Jan. 1, about $14.6 billions of World War I debts remained unpaid.)

The President's report contained a concluding paragraph much more significant than the one newsmen made into headlines. It said: "The attainment of the long-range security and economic objectives of the United States and the other United Nations is a task of the greatest importance if we are not to lose the victory. . . . We shall seek ... to achieve settlements . . . which will best attain these objectives."

Next day Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes undertook to correct the erroneous headlines. Patiently he explained that the U.S. is not seeking payment in dollars--"which will not be available to our debtors." But this did not mean, he said, that there are no Lend-Lease settlements to be negotiated; there was "no justification" for assuming that the debts were to be cancelled.

Jimmy Byrnes thus cleared the air for conversations in Washington this week with British envoys (Ambassador Halifax and Lord Keynes) seeking credits or other means to take up where Lend-Lease left off.

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