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THE WASHINGTON REPORTS OF ROBERT BRAND

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2021

Extract

I am very much obliged by your kind letter of March 20 with its enclosure confirming my appointment as Head of the Food Mission here and containing a memorandum of terms of reference of the Mission. I appreciate very sincerely the confidence you have shown me in asking me to be Head of the Mission. I need not say that I shall do my very utmost to fulfil this task satisfactorily as well as to carry out the duties involved in my membership of the British Supply Council in Washington. The problems arising out of the Lend-Lease Act, with which the Council has to deal, are novel and some important ones still await solution.

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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Historical Society

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References

1 Frederick James Marquis, Lord Woolton (1883–1964): businessman and Conservative politician; educated at the University of Manchester; Lewis's department store, Liverpool, 1928–1951; minister of food, 1940–1943; minister of reconstruction, 1943–1945; lord president of the council, 1945, 1951–1952; chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, 1952–1955; knighted 1935; Baron Woolton, 1939; Viscount Woolton, 1953; earl of Woolton, 1956.

2 In 1938 Brand had pressed the British government to develop munitions production in Canada. It took until September 1939 to establish the British Supply Board for Canada and the United States in Ottawa to organize North American supplies. But the Canadian government did not need an intermediary body because it was already buying for the British government. An Anglo-French American Purchasing Commission, created in New York in October 1939 to pool the two countries’ efforts, and known as the British Purchasing Commission after French defeat in 1940, became the centre of British purchasing – the US government could not buy for the British government. In January 1941 Britain replaced the Commission with the British Supply Council and created separate missions for food and shipping in March, which began operations in May. Hall, Duncan, North American Supply (London, 1955), 720Google Scholar, 69, 71–73, 267 n.

3 Sir Quintin Hill: comptroller general of the Department of Overseas Trade, seconded to Ministry of Food.

4 Maurice Inglis Hutton, later Sir Maurice (1904–1970): company director and public servant; Ministry of Food, 1939–1942; British Food Mission in North America, 1941, head of Mission, 1944–1948; British member, Combined Food Board, 1944–1946; International Emergency Food Council, 1946–1948; International Wheat Council, 1944–1948; UK executive director, World Bank, 1946–1947.

5 Van Zwanenberg was listed, in a press release, as a member of the British Food Mission but was not sent to Washington, since Woolton could not spare both him and Hutton, and Brand had made Hutton's presence at the Mission a condition of his acceptance of the post. Bodleian Library, Oxford, Robert Brand Papers, Brand 196/1, B. Correspondence 1941–4 British Food Mission folder, Woolton to Brand, 30 April 1941.

6 William Maxwell Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook (1879–1964): Canadian newspaper owner; acquired controlling stake in the Daily Express in 1916, making it the largest circulation newspaper in the world and using it to pursue conservative political campaigns; Baron Beaverbrook, 1917; -minister of information, 1918; minister of aircraft production, 1940–1941; minister of supply, 1941–1942.

7 Arthur Blaikie Purvis (1890–1941): British businessman in Canada; sent to United States in 1914 as representative of Imperial Chemical Industries to purchase $25 million of acetone, which was in shortage; head of Canadian Industries (affiliate of ICI), 1925; vice-chairman of Dunlop's, Canada; head of Anglo-French (subsequently the British) Purchasing Board, 1939–1941, and first chairman of British Supply Council, 1941; killed in aeroplane accident, 14 August 1941.

8 Sir John Anderson (1882–1958): politician; educated at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Leipzig; National Independent MP for the Scottish Combined Universities, 1938–1950; home secretary, 1939–1940; lord president of the Council, 1940–1943; chancellor of the exchequer, 1943–1945; Lord Waverley, 1952.

9 John Jestyn Llewellin (1893–1957): Conservative Party politician; educated at University College, Oxford; military service, 1914–1918; MP for Uxbridge, 1929–1945; minister of aircraft production, 1942; minister for supply resident in Washington DC, 1942–1943; minister of food, 1943–1945; UK delegate, UNRRA Conference, 1943; Baron Llewellin, 1945. He was ‘on the surface a perfect embodiment of John Bull, [who] lubricated long night conferences with excellent Scotch to the undoing of our secretary's minutes’, Acheson, Dean, Present at the Creation (New York, 1969), 77Google Scholar.

10 Edward Twentyman (d.1945): civil servant; Treasury, 1920–1940, head of division concerned with food policy in war, 1937–1940; transferred to Ministry of Food, 1940, 2nd secretary, 1941, chief representative in Washington, 1943–1945; British representative on the International Interim Commission for the Food and Agriculture Organisation, 1943–1945.

11 Frederic Harmer, assistant secretary in the Treasury, had been a member of a Treasury Delegation to Washington of March–June that led to the Anglo-American Petroleum Agreement of August 1944. See Harmer Diary (11 September 1945).

12 Sir David Waley: civil servant; principal assistant secretary, 1931–1946; KCMG, 1943; see also Harmer Diary n. 151.

13 Otto Jeidels, (1882–1947): banker; born in Frankfurt am Main; studied law in Bonn and at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin and political science, economics and law at the Cologne Business School, then PhD at Berlin; Berlin Handels-Gesellschaft, 1909–1938 – managing director, 1918–1938; discussed with Robert Brand and Sir Robert Kindersley (of Lazard Frères in London) the possibility of leaving Germany because of anti-Semitism; left for United States in 1938 by reclaiming Swiss citizenship; Lazard Frères, New York, July 1939–March 1943; Bank of America, March 1943–May 1945.

14 Amadeo Pietro Giannini (1870–1949): Italian-American banker; produce broker for farms in the Santa Clara Valley, California; managed his wealthy father-in-law's estate, 1901; a director of the Columbus Savings & Loan; founded Bank of Italy in San Francisco, 1904; merged with Bank of America, Los Angeles and renamed Bank of America, 1928; became the world's largest commercial bank in 1930s.

15 Sir Richard Valentine Nind Hopkins (1880–1955): civil servant; educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; Inland Revenue, 1906; chairman, Board of Inland Revenue, 1922–1927; controller of Finance and Supply Services, Treasury, 1927–1928; 2nd secretary, 1928–1942; permanent secretary, 1942–1945; KCB, 1920; GCB, 1941.

16 Henry Morgenthau, Jr (1891–1967): public official; educated at Cornell University; farmer and neighbour of Franklin Roosevelt, who, as New York governor, appointed him chairman of agricultural advisory committee and conservation commissioner, 1929–1933; chairman of the Federal Farm Board, 1933–1934; under secretary and acting secretary of the Treasury, 1933–1934; secretary of the US Treasury, 1934–1945.

17 Edward R. Stettinius (1900–1949): American businessman and public servant: educated at the University of Virginia; meteoric business career – junior position, General Motors, 1924, chairman of the board of US Steel, 1938; Lend-Lease Administrator, 1941–1943; under secretary of state, 1943–1944; secretary of state, 1944–1945; US permanent representative, United Nations, 1945–1949.

18 Redvers Opie (1900–1984): economist and civil servant; educated at Durham University and Harvard University; fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1931; counsellor and economic adviser, British Embassy, Washington, [?1939]–1946; adviser, UK Delegation, International Food Conference, Hot Springs, 1943; UK Delegate, UN Monetary and Financial Conference, Bretton Woods, 1944.

19 Sir Frederick Phillips (1884–1943): civil servant; educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; Treasury, 1908; Treasury representative, Washington, 1940–1943.

20 Vice chairman of the Board, National City Bank of New York; see also Harmer Diary n. 113.

21 JMK CW, XXIV, pp. 34–65, Keynes, ‘The Problem of Our External Finance in Transition’. Brand had been in London in June and discussed an earlier draft of the memorandum.

22 Keynes was holding talks with the Americans prior to the Bretton Woods conference of 1–22 July.

23 Total British external debts in December 1944 were £3,073 million (£2,434 million from the sterling area and £639 million from the rest of the world). In June 1945 they were £3,355 (£2,723 million from the sterling area and £632 million from the rest of the world); Cmd 6707, Statistical Material Presented During the Washington Negotiations (London, 1945), 11.

24 Harry Lloyd Hopkins (1890–1946): educated at Grinnell College, Iowa; social worker, New York; administrator of the Works Progress Administration, 1935–1938; secretary of commerce, 1938–1940; White House adviser to President Roosevelt, 1940–1945, playing a vital role in US diplomacy with Britain and the Soviet Union.

25 Major-General Sir Gordon Nevil Macready, chief, British Army Staff, 1942–May 1946, British Joint Staff Mission, Washington.

26 Walter Lippmann (1899–1974): American journalist and writer; educated at Harvard University; one of founding editors, New Republic, 1914; columnist for Herald Tribune, 1931–1962, and the Washington Post, 1963–1974 and syndicated across newspapers in United States; Pulitzer Prize, 1958 and 1962; popularized the term ‘Cold War’ in columns in 1947, later gathered in a book, The Cold War (1947).

27 Andrew Russell (Drew) Pearson (1897–1969): US journalist; educated at Swarthmore College; syndicated column, ‘Washington Merry-Go-Round’, which offered critical commentary on politics and politicians, for Scripps-Howard newspapers, 1931–1941, for the Washington Post, 1941–1969.

28 Brendan Bracken (1901–1958): Irish-born Conservative politician and confidant of Winston Churchill; founding editor, The Banker, 1926; owner of the Financial Times, 1945; MP for Paddington North, 1929–1945, Bournemouth East and Christchurch, 1945–1952; parliamentary private secretary to the prime minister, Winston Churchill, 1940–1941; minister of information, 1941–1945; first lord of the admiralty, 1945; Viscount Bracken, 1952.

29 When Edward Stettinius succeeded Cordell Hull as secretary of state on 1 December 1944, he introduced structural changes and shuffled staff appointments; see Department of State Bulletin, 11:286A (17 December 1944), 776–813.

30 Article VII of the Anglo-American Lend-Lease Agreement, embodied the consideration that committed Britain to end trade discrimination by proceeding to arrange the abandonment of Imperial Preference.

31 Count Carlo Sforza (1872–1952): Italian diplomat and anti-fascist politician; educated at the University of Pisa; Italian diplomatic service, 1896, serving in Cairo, Paris, Constantinople, Beijing, and Madrid but resigned in 1922 when Mussolini took power; in France, Britain, and United States until Italian surrender in September 1943; joined Italy's provisional government, June 1944. Without conferring with Washington, Churchill in December 1944 told the Italian government that he objected to Sforza's appointment as foreign minister. Stettinius then released a statement saying the United States had not been consulted and did not share Churchill's view. FRUS Conferences at Malta and Yalta 1945, 430–432, editorial note.

32 Oscar Sydney Cox (1905–1966): lawyer and government official; educated at MIT and Yale University Law School; law firm of Cadwalader, 1929–1934; assistant corporation counsel in charge of taxes, New York City, 1934–1938; assistant to the General Counsel, U.S. Treasury Department, 1938–1941 (led the team drafting the Lend-Lease Bill); general counsel of the Lend-Lease Administration and of the Office of Emergency Management, 1941–1943; assistant solicitor general of the United States, 1942–1943; important behind-the-scenes role in creating War Refugee Board, 1943–1944; general counsel, FEA, 1943–1945); deputy administrator, FEA, 1945.

33 The Lend-Lease Act empowered Congress to approve appropriations. There were six appropriations in total: in March and October 1941, then annually 1942–1945.

34 James Vincent Forrestal (1892–1949): US public official; educated at Dartmouth and Princeton University; Wall Street, 1916; under secretary of the navy, 1940–1944; secretary of the navy, 1944–1947; secretary of defense, 1947–1949.

35 The negotiations just completed by Keynes that reached agreement on Lend-Lease aid to Britain in Stage II.

36 Bernard Baruch (1870–1965): US businessman; chairman, War Industries Board, 1918–1919; member, Supreme Economic Council, 1919; American delegate on Economic and Reparations Clauses of the Versailles Treaty, 1919; adviser (without official position) to Franklin Roosevelt on wartime mobilization.

37 John Jay McCloy (1896–1970): US official; educated at Amherst College and Harvard Law School; practised law, 1921–1942; assistant secretary of war, 1942–1945; president of the World Bank, 1947–1949; high commissioner to Germany, 1949–1953.

38 Leo Pasvolsky (1893–1953): Russian-born American economist and public official; educated at City College, New York and Columbia University; State Department, 1935–1946, serving as special assistant to Cordell Hull and thereby playing a crucial role in framing US views on the United Nations; Brookings Institution, 1946–1953.

39 Emanuel Alexandrovich Goldenweiser, (1883–1953): Russian-born economist; educated at Columbia University and Cornell University; director, Division of Research and Statistics, Federal Reserve Board, 1926–1945. He visited Britain in summer 1945, reporting back sympathetically on its economic problems; and testified to the Senate in 1946 in support of the US loan; Library of Congress, E.A. Goldenweiser Papers, box 4, International Negotiations (1930–1946) folder.

40 Richard Kidston Law (1901–1980): Conservative politician; educated at St John's College, Oxford; MP for SW Hull, 1931–1945, South Kensington, 1945–1950, Haltemprice, Hull, 1950–1954; financial secretary, War Office, 1940–1941; Foreign Office – parliamentary under secretary, 1941–1943, minister of state, 1943–1945.

41 James Clement Dunn (1890–1979): US diplomat; educated privately; State Department, 1922; assistant secretary of state for European, Far Eastern, Near Eastern, and African Affairs, 1944–1946; ambassador to Italy, 1947–1952; ambassador to France, 1952–1953; ambassador to Spain, 1953–1955; ambassador to Brazil, 1955–1956.

42 The Dumbarton Oaks Conference, August–October 1944, agreed a framework for the United Nations Organization, which, following some amendments in early 1945, was inaugurated at San Francisco in June 1945.

43 Hubert Giles Gladwyn Jebb (1900–1996): diplomat; educated at Magdalen College, Oxford; Diplomatic Service, 1924; head of Economic and Reconstruction Department, Foreign Office, 1942–1946; assistant under secretary, 1946–1948; permanent representative to UN, 1950–1954; ambassador to France, 1954–1960; knighthood, 1949, Baron Gladwyn, 1960.

44 There were differences over Sforza's fitness to be Italian foreign minister, the intervention of British troops to support the Royalist government in Greece and concerns over the role of the Polish government in exile in London in the new Soviet-dominated government in Warsaw.

45 Brand to Anderson, 23 August 1944 above.

46 The British secured inclusion of the scarce currency clause as Article VII of the IMF Agreement, which allowed countries with current account deficits to apply, in certain circumstances, restrictions on purchases from countries with current account surpluses. In other words, Britain could restrict US dollar purchases when short of dollars.

47 Willem Christiaan Naudé (1909–?1964): South African diplomat; attaché, South African Legation, Washington; counsellor, South African High Commission, London, 1946–1949; South African ambassador to the United States, 1960–1965.

48 Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status is established through a clause in a trade agreement between two countries stating that each will accord to the other the same treatment on tariffs and quotas as they extend to the most favoured nation with which each trades.

49 Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund, Article VII 2(a) stated ‘no member shall, without the approval of the Fund, impose restrictions on the making of payments and transfers for current international transactions’; and Article VIII 4 outlined the obligations of members in currency exchange arrangements.

50 Edward M. Bernstein (1904–1996): US economist and official; educated at the University of Chicago and Harvard University; professor of Economics, University of North Carolina, 1935–1940: principal economist, US Treasury, 1940–1946; Research Director, IMF, 1946–1958.

51 The Round Table movement, and its journal the Round Table founded in 1910 by Brand and other former members of Lord Milner's advisory group, the ‘kindergarten’, in South Africa, promoted good relations between Britain and its Commonwealth.

52 Harold Edward Stassen (1907–2001): US Republican politician; educated at the University of Minnesota; governor of Minnesota, 1939–1943, resigned to serve in US Navy, 1943–1945; delegate at San Francisco Conference, 1945, creating UN; ran unsuccessfully for Republican nominee for President in 1944 and 8 other times.

53 Robert John Graham Boothby (1900–1986): Conservative politician; educated at Magdalen College, Oxford; MP, 1924–1958; MP for Aberdeen and Kincardine East, 1924–1950, East Aberdeenshire, 1950–1958; parliamentary private secretary to the chancellor of exchequer, Winston Churchill, 1926–1929; private secretary, Ministry of Food, 1940–1941; Baron Boothby, 1958. Boothby covered the US loan talks in late 1945 for the News of the World. He opposed the agreement in Parliament, saying the government had no mandate ‘to sell the British Empire for a packet of cigarettes’. Commons, 5th ser., vol. 417, 12 December 1945, cols 421–558, at 456–469.

54 Samuel Irving Rosenman (1896–1973): lawyer, judge, party activist, and public servant; educated at Columbia University Law School; counsel to Franklin Roosevelt, 1929–1933 – he coined the term New Deal; justice, New York Supreme Court, 1929–1933; resigned to become special counsel for President Roosevelt, 1943; special counsel for President Truman, 1943–1946. He edited The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 13 vols (1938–1950).

55 The meeting of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at Yalta in the Crimea, 4–11 February, when they discussed post-war Germany and Europe, especially Poland.

56 Virginius Frank Coe (1907–1980): US economist and public servant; educated at the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University; taught at the University of Toronto, 1934–1939; adviser at US Treasury; first US executive director of the IMF, 1946; accused of being a communist by Elizabeth Bentley; resigned in 1952 after invoking the Fifth Amendment before the Senate Internal Security Committee; moved to China in 1958.

57 They were staying at Mirador, the family home of Brand's deceased wife and made available to the Halifaxes for the duration of the war.

58 Oliver Lyttelton (1893–1972): businessman; educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; president of the board of trade, 1940–1941; minister of production, 1942–1945; president of the board of trade, 1945; colonial secretary, 1951–1954; Viscount Chandos, 1954.

59 JMK CW, XXIV, pp. 257–295, Keynes, ‘Overseas Financial Policy in Stage III’, 18 March 1945 draft, revised and submitted to the War Cabinet on 15 May.

60 JMK CW, XXIV, pp. 277 (paragraph 33 of the memorandum).

61 JMK CW, XXIV, p. 281 (paragraph 44(i) of the memorandum regarding $3 billion of British expenditure in the United States before Lend-Lease came into full operations.

62 Milo Randolph Perkins (1900–1972): US businessman; secretary of agriculture, 1933–1940; Board of Economic Warfare, 1942–1944; served on Advisory Committee on Post-War Foreign Policy, 1943–1944.

63 Admiral William Daniel Leahy (1875–1959): US naval officer; educated at the US Naval Academy; chief of naval operations, 1937–1939; ambassador to France, 1940–1942; personal chief of staff to President Roosevelt, 1942–1945, and President Truman, 1945–1949.

64 Brand to Keynes, 5 April 1945 above.

65 JMK CW, XXIV, p. 278.

66 JMK CW, XXIV, pp. 283–290.

67 Colin T. Crowe (1913–1989): diplomat; member of the Treasury Delegation, Washington, 1945; Economic Relations Department, Foreign Office, 1945–1948.

68 Brand's son, Robert James, was killed in action in late March 1945.

69 Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965): Vienna-born associate justice, Supreme Court of the United States, 1939–1962; married Marion Denman, 1919.

70 Jean Monnet (1888–1979): French official and statesman; deputy secretary general, League of Nations, 1918; head of French Air Mission, Washington DC, 1938–1939; chairman, Franco-British Economic Co-ordinating Committee, 1939; member of British Supply Council, 1940–1943, author of Monnet Plan, 1946. He negotiated an agreement giving France $2,750 million in Lend-Lease aid; Duchêne, Francois, Jean Monnet: The First Statesman of Independence (New York, 1994), 141Google Scholar.

71 JMK CW, XXIV, pp. 304–305.

72 A claim or charge against property or funds for payment of a debt or an amount owed for services rendered.

73 JMK CW, XXIV, p. 320 n: Hopkins's reply to Brand's letter of sympathy following Roosevelt's death.

74 Brand carefully outlined the heavy economic burdens of the war on Britain but emphasized a route out of these difficulties through Britain's own efforts and through international co-operation, which would also promote the stability the world needed; ‘Some British Post-War Problems’, speech to the Bond Club of New York, 20 February 1945 in British Information Services, British Speeches of the Day, Vol. III (New York, 1945), 211–218.

75 This was captured in a cartoon in the New York Tribune (17 September 1945), sent by Hall-Patch, who noted: ‘The place we are given in the queue is not without significance!’ England was placed tenth in a queue for US help, behind Germany, Japan, Italy, Europe, France, Near East, South America, India, China and Russia. TNA, FO 371/45702, UE4585/1094/53, Edmund Hall-Patch (UK Treasury Delegation) to Nevile Butler (Foreign Office), 17 September 1945.

76 JMK CW, XXIV, pp. 310–317.

77 Morgenthau's committee was established after Roosevelt and Churchill agreed in September 1944 that provision should be made for Lend-Lease Stage II aid to Britain. It reached agreement with US agencies on the scale of munitions and non-munitions appropriations and reported to the Combined Lend-Lease Committee, where Keynes and Crowley agreed on the amount of assistance on 27 November 1944. Bodleian Library, Oxford, Robert Brand Papers, Brand 195/1, Financial Papers 1945, Anglo-American financial agreement folder, ‘Aide Memoire for Mr Secretary Morgenthau’, 17 May 1945; Churchill College, Cambridge, Robinson Papers, ROBN 3/1/5, Minutes of Combined Sub-Committee on Mutual Lend-Lease Aid Between US and UK, 27 November 1944.

78 Brehon Burke Somervell (1892–1955): Commanding General Army Service Forces, War Department, Washington 1942–1946, responsible for supplying ground munitions to British forces.

79 In his message of 5 April (see above) Brand had expressed concern at the proposed scale of freed sterling. Keynes explained in his reply of 24 April that the releases would be confined to sterling required to finance current transactions (the Bretton Woods formula); JMK CW, XXIV, p. 312.

80 William Averell Harriman (1891–1986): US businessman, politician and diplomat; educated at Yale University; special envoy to Europe (Lend-Lease), 1941–1943; ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1943–1946; ambassador to Britain, 1946; secretary of commerce, 1946–1948; director of Mutual Security Agency, 1951–1953; governor of New York, 1955–1958; one of the so-called ‘Wise Men’ advising successive presidents on foreign policy.

81 Brand attached Lawrence Hunt, ‘America's debt to Britain’, Montreal Daily Star (1 May 1945), the New York lawyer's address praising Britain for its sacrifices in the war and its pursuit of justice and freedom; and arguing that close Anglo-American partnership was fundamental to post-war peace and stability.

82 Jesse Holman Jones (1874–1956): US businessman, banker and public official; Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1932–1939, chairman, 1933–1939; secretary of commerce, 1940–1945.

83 JMK CW, XXIV, p. 270.

84 JMK CW, XXIV, p. 287.

85 JMK CW, XXIV, p. 312.

86 JMK CW, XXIV, p. 264.

87 ‘3-Billion Gift to Britain Advocated’, Washington Post (22 April 1945) reported that Senator Robert Taft and the vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, John H. Williams, spoke in favour of a $3 billion grant to Britain; and Taft also claimed that British officials were seeking grants of $7 billion to $8 billion.

88 Keynes followed Brand's advice, replying on 29 June: ‘Dear Bob, Thank you for suggesting that I should write to Denby, and I am more than delighted to do so and append the enclosed, which I hope will do.’ Keynes wrote to Denby: ‘I feel moved to send you a line to say with what regret, indeed dismay, your friends over here have heard of your resignation from F.E.A. . . . In spite of all the difficulties and grumblings we have sometimes had to utter, F.E.A. has done a really grand work, and, in the opinion of some of us, it has owed that to you as much as to anyone else.’ TNA, T247/49, OF272/47.

89 In the face of a run on sterling, Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government collapsed in 1931, after failing to agree on a response. MacDonald remained as prime minister in the National government, which left the gold standard and devalued the pound against gold and the dollar.

90 Keynes had proposed in his memorandum of 18 March a three-part strategy of cancelling, freeing, and funding the sterling balances. He envisaged cancelling £880 million, freeing £750 million and funding £1,500 million. In his 13 August memorandum he suggested cancelling $4 billion, freeing $1 billion, and funding and releasing over 50 years the remaining approximately $7,200 million, a proposal he put to the Americans on 20 September. JMK CW, XXIV, pp. 287, 388, 390, 493–494. See Harmer Diary 20 September 1945. Brand was repeatedly wary about sterling convertibility – see messages of 5 April and 14 May above.

91 Richard Barnes William (‘Otto’) Clarke (1910–1975): journalist and civil servant; educated at Clare College, Cambridge; Financial News, 1933–1939; Treasury – 1944, 2nd permanent secretary, 1962–1966; permanent secretary, Ministry of Aviation, 1966; permanent secretary, Ministry of Technology, 1966–1970; KCB, 1964.

92 3(c) credit terms involved a 30 years’ loan at 2⅜ per cent. See Harmer Diary, 18 October 1945.

93 Commons, 5th ser., vol. 413, 24 August 1945, cols 955–957. See also Introduction p. 2 and n. 5.

94 On Clayton talks in London in August 1945, see FRUS, 1945, VI, 79–87, 97–101, 103–105.

95 See DBPO, 1st ser., III, No 17, pp. 72–77, Meeting of Ministers, 23 August 1945, 10:15pm.

96 Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947): Conservative politician; educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; MP for Bewdley, 1908–1937; chancellor of the exchequer, 1922–1923 – Baldwin-Norman mission to US reached agreement on war debts, January 1923; prime minister, 1923–1924; 1924–1929, 1935–1937; Earl Baldwin, 1937.

97 Montagu Collet Norman (1871–1952): banker; educated at King's College, Cambridge (one year); governor of the Bank of England, 1920–1944; Baron Norman, 1944.

98 DBPO, 1st ser., III, 272–274, British Missions, Washington to Cabinet Offices, Telegram NABOB 232, 30 October 1945. The message from Halifax and Keynes declared, ‘we are no friends to waivers . . . [but feel] very strongly that the introduction . . . of a Washington waiver cannot do us any harm’.

99 TNA, FO 371/45711, UE5831/1094/53, Washington to Cabinet Offices, telegram NABOB 404, 27 November 1945.

100 Eady minuted the letter, saying the Chancellor might ‘find this useful to read’. Hugh Dalton initialled it on 4 December.

101 The Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF and the World Bank, could only begin operations after formal approval from countries totalling 65% of the quotas (for the IMF) or subscriptions (to the Bank).

102 JMK CW, XXIV, p. 279 (paragraph 40), 278 (paragraph 37).

103 Article 8 of the agreement stipulated that, one year after the effective date of the agreement, there would be no exchange controls on US imports or other US-British transactions, and no restrictions on payments and transfers for current transactions; ‘Financial Agreement Text’, Department of State Bulletin, 13:337 (9 December 1945), 908 [907–909].

104 JMK CW, XXIV, pp. 605–624, Keynes's speech in the House of Lords, 18 December 1945.

105 Hubert Douglas Henderson 1890–1952): economist; educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, 1919–1923; economic adviser, Treasury, 1939–1944; Drummond Professor of Political Economy, University of Oxford, 1945–1951; warden, All Souls College, Oxford, 1951–1952. He described the agreement with the United States as ‘designed not to help to correct the disequilibrium in the balance of payments, but to forbid attempts to correct it’; and implied that some more restrictive form of international trade was a viable alternative. ‘The Anglo-American Financial Agreement’, Bulletin of the Oxford University Institute of Statistics, 8:1 (January 1946), 1–13, quotation at 13.

106 Cameron Fromanteel Cobbold (1904–1987): banker; educated at King's College, Cambridge; Bank of England, 1933–1961: adviser, 1933; executive director, 1938–1945; deputy governor, 1945–1949; governor, 1949–1961; Baron Cobbold, 1960.

107 DBPO, 1st ser., IV, 72–74.

108 Truman's State of the Union address, 21 January 1946; available at www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-the-congress-the-state-the-union-and-the-budget-for-1947 (viewed 11 August 2020).

109 Harold LeClair Ickes (1874–1952): US politician; educated at the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Law School; secretary of the interior, 1933–1946.

110 Clinton Presba Anderson (1895–1975): Democratic Party politician; educated at Dakota Wesleyan University and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; House of Representatives, 1941–1945; secretary of agriculture, 1945–1948; Senate, 1948–1973.

111 The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, 1934 required renewal every three years, which was secured in 1937, 1940, 1943, and 1945. It gave power to the president to negotiate bilateral reciprocal trade agreements, which saw steady reductions in US tariffs, thereby promoting freer world trade.

112 Neither Dalton nor Attlee gave a speech. But the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin said in the House of Commons ‘I am not pessimistic’, when speaking on the many difficulties ahead and spoke of the range of co-operation with the United States; Commons, vol. 419, 21 February 1946, cols 1364–1366.

113 Edward William Macleay Grigg, 1st Baron Altrincham (1879–1955): politician; educated at New College, Oxford; Liberal MP for Oldham, 1922–1925, Conservative MP for Altrincham, 1933–1945; private secretary to the prime minister, Lloyd George, 1920–1922; governor of Kenya, 1925–1930; minister resident, Middle East, 1944–1945; Baron Altrincham, 1945; fellow member (with Brand) of the Round Table.

114 Brand Papers, Brand 197/1, A. Misc Correspondence Washington 1941–6 folder, Lord Altrincham to Brand, 6 February 1946. Altrincham was critical of the commercial commitments in the financial agreement, lamenting the dominance of the United States and the need for Britain to resume its strong mediatory role between the two closed blocs of the Soviet Union and the United States.

115 Cecil Horsfall (1888–1965): banker; educated at Trinity College, Oxford; managing director, Lazard Brothers, 1937; member of the Round Table from 1921. Anon [Cecil Horsfall], ‘Finance of Recovery: The Loan in Parliament and Congress’, Round Table, 36:142 (1946), 109–116.

116 Britain received an RFC loan of $425 million in July 1941 to cover expenditure before Lend-Lease aid started flowing.

117 Article X declared the two countries would ‘promote . . . the expansion of commerce through appropriate international agreements on commercial policy’.

118 The Savannah, Georgia Conference of 8–22 March 1946 was the inaugural meeting of the boards of governors of the IMF and World Bank.

119 Jan Christian Smuts (1870–1950): South African politician; educated at Victoria College, Stellenbosch, and Christ's College, Cambridge; member of Transvaal government, 1906–1909; prime minister of Union of South Africa, 1919–1924, 1939–1948.

120 Brand's daughter Dinah and her husband Lyttelton Fox and their children Phyllis and James Fox.