Empire Lost - Andrew Stewart [63]
Within the DO the importance of the United States was entirely recognized by Cranborne who also held that the authorities in Washington were the only ones who could deter Japan and protect the British Empire's position in the Far East.32 He had his concerns about the extent of the relationship, however, and these drew heavily upon his knowledge of the Dominions' thinking on the matter. On the one hand there was the New Zealand high commissioner in London raging about 'toadying to a power which only acted in accordance with its own selfish and commercial interests'.33 On the other was Canada which, even before the signing of the Ogdensburg Agreement between Mackenzie King and Roosevelt in August 1940, was recognized within Whitehall, albeit reluctantly in some quarters, as enjoying a special relationship with the Washington administration.34 In light of its geography, history and culture, the fact that Canada should feel close to its southern neighbour can be seen today as not surprising; at the time it caused some confusion within Whitehall's more obstreperous clique. Generally speaking, as one astute commentator put it just weeks after the outbreak of war, the American-Dominions relationship would always be complicated.35 This was because the Dominions were at the same time 'both jealous and contra-wise' admirers of all things American. They recognized that securing the support of the authorities in Washington was a prerequisite to winning the war and consequently they campaigned hard for closer links.36
In November 1940 Roosevelt had won the presidential election and with it came—in response to a lengthy and pointed plea from Churchill—a greater degree of confidence to provide some measure of succour. By the spring of the following year he was in a more sympathetic mood, 'We have been milking the British financial cow, which had plenty of milk at one time, but which has now about become dry.'37 The Lend-Lease Act, pushed through Congress in the first two months of 1941 and signed into law in March saved the day in so much as it did away with the cash-and-carry policy which had obliged the British authorities to pay for all of its supplies bought in the United States in hard currency. Before its agreement Halifax had been given an ultimatum. The British must sell one of their important companies in the next week as a mark of good faith; a major subsidiary of Courtaulds was consequently sold at a knock-down price.38 Here was the visible demonstration of the price of salvation, what was left of Britain's economic strength. According to one of those present the promise given by Harry Hopkins, the president's emissary, that he would tell Roosevelt upon his return that the United States should unconditionally support the British invoked tears in the famously lachrymose British leader and 'seemed like a rope thrown to a drowning man'.39 According to one American reviewer US support for Britain's war effort was 'a knife to open that oyster shell, the Empire'.40 There also remained those in Washington who saw the proposed facilities as a device that would be used by the British to sustain exports in the face of American competition; essentially having been supplied with raw materials and components free of charge these would then be sold in the global export markets.41 This rather seemed to overlook the fact that the subsequent German attack against the Soviet Union should, if any further evidence were still needed, have amply demonstrated the enduring nature of Hitler's expansionist plans.
Roosevelt's financial promise was well received despite its apparently reserved nature. According to Cuthbert Headlam, Conservative MP for the safe seat of Newcastle North, the Americans were 'a quaint lot', prepared to do everything 'as their share in the war for democracy' but fight.42 The Dominions, however, were often kept deliberately on the fringes of these discussions as they gained momentum throughout 1941, making them especially wary of the longer-term implications