Mr. Prime Minister:-
 
      
 
 
When you were with us during the latter part of December, 
      1941, and the first few days of 1942, after we had become active 
      participants in the war, plans for a division of responsibilities 
      between your country and mine became generally fixed in certain 
      understandings. In matters of production as well as in other 
      matters, we agreed that mutual advantages were to be gained by 
      concentrating, in so far as it was practical, our energies on 
      doing those things which each of us was best qualified to do.
 
      
 
 
Here in this country in abundance were the natural resources 
      of critical materials. Here there had been developed the welding 
      technique which enables us to construct a standard merchant ship 
      with a speed unequalled in the history of merchant shipping. 
      Here there was waiting cargo to be moved in shipments to your 
      Island and to other theatres. If your country was to have carried 
      out its contemplated ship construction program, it would have 
      been necessary to move large tonnages of the raw materials that 
      we have here across the Atlantic to your hills and yards, and 
      then in the form of a finished ship to send them back to our 
      ports for the cargo that was waiting to be carried.