Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy - Ludwig von Mises ...

58 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply
ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense
of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifi ce, as we
would show were we at war. 14
FDR sent his proposal for lend-lease to Congress early in
1941. As noted New York Times correspondent Arthur Krock
recalled,
Congress and the public were assured, on the highest Executive
word, that the measure was a means to keep the United States
from becoming involved abroad, on land, sea and in the air, in
World War II.
For Krock, this constituted “gross deception.”
[I]t was obvious—and so pointed out repeatedly at the time
that militant reaction by the Central Powers and Japan was a
certainty; hence the Lend-Lease Act would inevitably change
the position of the United States from a disguised cobelligerent—a
status previously reached by presidential “Executive
Orders”—to an active one. 15
Morgenthau testifi ed for lend-lease, saying that its purpose
was to save the British fl eet as a bulwark in the Atlantic. 16 Th e
House passed the bill on February 8, the Senate on March 8, and
the president signed it into law on March 11, 1941.
14 Department of State, Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1931–1941
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Offi ce, 1943), pp. 599–607.
15 Arthur Krock, Th e Consent of the Governed, and Other Deceits (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1971), p. 40.
16 John Morton Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries: Years of Urgency, 1938–
1941 (Boston: Houghton Miffl in, 1965), pp. 221ff .