Lend-Lease - Quotations

Quotations

Franklin D. Roosevelt, eager to ensure public consent for this controversial plan, explained to the public and the press that his plan was comparable to one neighbor's lending another a garden hose to put out a fire in his home. "What do I do in such a crisis?" the president asked at a press conference. "I don't say... 'Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it' …I don't want $15 — I want my garden hose back after the fire is over."

To which Robert Alphonso Taft, Republican Senator from Ohio, responded: "Lending war equipment is a good deal like lending chewing gum. You don't want it back."

Joseph Stalin, during the Tehran Conference in 1943, acknowledged publicly the importance of American efforts during a dinner at the conference: "Without American production the United Nations could never have won the war."