Financial Aid to China
The policy which makes it profitable for Britain and America tc give the utmost possible aid to Russia is applicable for exactly the same reasons to China. Just as Russia is in a position to engage and injure the German armies on the largest scale, so also China is capable of inflicting heavy blows on the massed armies of Japan. Britain and the United States have for a long time been sending limited supplies to China via the Burma Road, but they now realise that it is essential that supplies should arrive in far larger quantities and that no considerations of pay- ment or credit should stand in the way. It has been arranged that L50,000,000 should be lent by the British Government to China, and £i25,000,00o by the United States subject to the approval of Congress ; and, what is perhaps of even greater moment, munitions and military equipment are to be supplied under a lease-lend arrangement. Both Britain and America are now alive to the fact that, in the disposition of the munitions that either can provide, what matters most is that they should reach the forces which . can make best use of them against the enemy. That is the principle on which priorities are to be based. There has been undisguised anxiety in Chungking lest Britain and America should think too much of Hitler as the chief enemy and subordinate the Asiatic campaign unduly. The arrangements now made should dispel all concern about that.
Previous page
