Dear 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 wins 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 ships 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 mills 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.
 
      
 
 
Obviously, this would have entailed a waste of materials and 
      time. It was only natural for us then to decide that this country 
      was to be the predominant