Chapter 8 Summary

By November of 1940, the British were in more trouble than ever. Churchill wrote to Roosevelt that they could no longer pay for shipping and other supplies. The idea of loaning money to the British was extremely unpopular.

Roosevelt came up with an ingenious way of selling Americans on helping the British. He put it in folksy terms. If your neighbor's house is on fire, you lend him your fire hose and you don't charge him for its use. In the same way, we could lend help to the British in their hour of need. He called his proposal "lend-lease" and presented it during a fireside chat in a speech that became known as "The Arsenal of Democracy" speech. Americans were in favor of helping the British this way, particularly if this could be a substitute for America itself going to war.

On January...