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entered into his thinking and planning, but when he would plan a thing like this he was always looking for background that seemed reasonable to him as a moral reason, as well as a political reason for doing what he thought ought to be done. He thought we ought to do something to help the British. He began to figure it out in the simplest possible terms. The enemies of Lend Lease immediately said, “You can't lend an expendable material. If you lend a bullet, and it's shot, you can't get it back.” His answer to that was, “You can't get the bullet back, but you can get something.” If you lend your neighbor your ladder at the time that his house is on fire, the house may still burn and burn up your ladder which is just made of wood. Your neighbor can't return you that ladder. If his house has burned down, he won't be able to even return you money for it. But the next potato crop he gets, he comes around with a few barrels of potatoes for you.
At that time I didn't really consider that it would be repayment in kind. I thought it didn't matter. I thought that we were standing on the rim of a world holocaust and that it didn't much matter how we got paid, or if we got paid. That was the difference between this and the First World War, when we assumed we would be repaid dollar for dollar. That was due to the greater sophistication that had developed
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