other two are stuck in the ice somewhere with broken propellers, and they could not get them out. We have offered to go and clear them ourselves if they will tell us where they are. Other than that, we

have not had any returns from the Soviet Union. Mr. ROONEY. What do we claim they owe us?

Mr. THORP. Our estimate as to what they owe us is somewhat over $2 billion.

Mr. ROONEY. What is the last amount that they admit owing?

Mr. THORP. They talk about $240 million. I might say when they talk about $240 million, that is not a cash offer; that is an offer on the basis of a 50-year credit arrangement at very low interest over the period.

LEND-LEASE DEBT OF GREAT BRITAIN

Mr. ROONEY. What is the present status of the lend-lease debt of Great Britain?

Mr. THORP. That was settled about 3 to 4 years ago.

Mr. ROONEY. What was the settlement?

Mr. THORP. That was mixed up with the sale of surplus. It was about $800 million total.

(NOTE-The exact figure of 622.5 was supplied later.)

Mr. THORP. That was on a long-term credit basis, and the British have made payments as requested in accordance with the agreement. Mr. ROONEY. What are the payment schedules?

Mr. THORP. May I ask Mr. Stinebower, who is responsible for this, to give you the detail?

Mr. STINEBOWER. I believe it was a 55-year period.

Mr. ROONEY. You believe it is? Don't you know?
Mr. STINEBOWER. It is a 55-year period.

(Information that it is a 50-year period was supplied later).

Mr. ROONEY. At how much a year?

Mr. STINEBOWER. I will have to give you that figure for the record.

(The yearly payment is approximately $18 million per year.)

Mr. ROONEY. You do not remember these figures?

Mr. STINEBOWER. No, sir.

Mr. ROONEY. Well, this is the second largest item in your shop, in regard to lend-lease settlements, is it not?

Mr. STINEBOWER. It is the largest item.

Mr. ROONEY. It is the largest agreed item. Let us put it that way. Correct?

Mr. STINEBOWER. Yes, sir. It is the largest item in any sense.

Mr. ROONEY. Well, Mr: Thorp was talking about $2 billion as our claim against the Soviet Union. Now you have told me you have settled with Great Britain for in the neighborhood of $800 million. Are my figures correct?

Mr. STINEBOWER. I was talking about the over-all amount of lend-lease we had given the United Kingdom, which is the largest amount of lend-lease given. Mr. Thorp was talking in terms of the settlement.

Mr. ROONEY. What was the amount of lend-lease given Great Britain, for which we have settled for approximately $800 million?

Mr. STINEBOWER. About $25 billion. Most of that was in the form of military equipment that was consumed in the process of the war. (A corrected figure of $21 billion was supplied later.)

Mr. ROONEY. Do you consider $800 million a good settlement?

Mr. STINEBOWER. The principle on which the settlement was made was to make no charge for items lost and consumed and used up during the war. The settlement was in terms of commodities which were in the pipeline afterward and which remained for consumption in the countries when the war was over.

Mr. ROONEY. Mr. Thorp, has any payment on the final settlement with Great Britain yet been received?

Mr. STINEBOWER. None of them are due yet. I think they begin in 1952, but I would have to check that.

(The first payment is due December 31, 1951.)

MI. ROONEY. When do we get some of the principal, if ever?
Mr. STINEBOWER. Those principal payments begin December 31,

1951.

Mr. ROONEY. In what amount?

Mr. STINEBOWER. I will have to check the figure.

(The amount is approximately $18 million, consisting of both principal and interest. However, in accordance with the agreement the United States has received the equivalent of $17.5 million in local currency and real estate.)

Mr. ROONEY. Do you know whether or not Great Britain has made any payments on their obligations to Israel, India, Egypt, and other countries?

Mr. THORP. Yes; they have. In connection with their sterling balances, which are obligations in the pound sterling, they have made payments. Those sterling balances were left after the war, and there have been some reductions, although at the same time other obligations have been built up. So that actually the British position is not one of an over-all great reduction in her foreign obligations.

RECIPROCAL TRADE PROGRAM

Mr. PRESTON. Mr. Thorp, you are in charge of the reciprocal trade program?

Mr. THORP. Yes; I am.

Mr. PRESTON. For the last year or two I have been raising this question each time you gentlemen have come before us. I was just looking to see if I raised it last year, and I could not find it at the moment the question of the reciprocal trade agreement this Government has with the Republic of Cuba concerning the import tax which they charge on lumber.

They have constantly violated their agreement with this Government and have charged an import tax on all lumber shipped in from this country, while they have permitted similar lumber to come in from some of the Latin American countries-Honduras in particularwithout the enforcement of the tax. I have called this to the attention of the State Department repeatedly, and Mr. Butler, the Ambassador, has made numerous representations to the Cuban Government about this, always receiving the same promise of some action in the future but which never has become a reality.

I think a sufficient length of time has passed to permit our Government to press the Cuban Government to live up to their agreement with us and, if they are not going to, to take some steps of a retaliatory nature to let them know they cannot make an agreement with us and get by indefinitely with failing to live up to it like they have been doing.

Are you familiar with that situation?

Mr. THORP. I am not familiar specifically with the lumber one. I have two comments to make. One, I basically agree with you that in the case of reciprocal trade agreements, if the other country fails to live up to its obligations, it is our duty to take action. And I can say that with some confidence, because that is what we have done with Mexico. Mexico failed to live up to her part of the agreement with us, and we gave Mexico plenty of opportunity to work the situation out, and when they failed to do it we terminated the agreement with them.

In the case of Cuba, I am more familiar with the difficulties we have had over textiles than I am with lumber. I do know in the textile field we have had real difficulty about the trade agreement and have been having discussions with them.

I will be very glad personally to move in on this lumber problem, with which I am not familiar. I certainly would entirely agree that this Government cannot be in a position of having its undertakings with other countries violated.

Mr. PRESTON. I hope you won't treat it as de novo, because it has been in existence for some time.

Mr. THORP. I will get caught up on it right away and move on from there.

DUPLICATION OF FUNCTIONS OF COMMERCE DEPARTMENT

Mr. PRESTON. I am wondering, Mr. Thorp, if there is considerable duplication and overlapping of this section and our Office of International Trade in the Commerce Department. Hearing your general statement and the general statement given by the Office of International Trade of the Commerce Department, I for one recognize a striking similarity. What about that?

Mr. THORP. We have worked very closely together, and I am not aware of duplication. We have had a number of special studies made to make sure that was not the case. By and large, it is our responsibility to carry out negotiations with other governments. We have to be concerned with particular things which are done which have a bearing on the over-all foreign relations. We are not in a position to do many of the things which the Office of International Trade does, which has experts in much greater numbers than we do on the specific commodity situations, for example. But I think the two offices work well together without duplication. A large part of our work is related directly to the relationship with other governments.

Mr. PRESTON. Do your people make a study of the available supplies throughout the world?

Mr. THORP. No. We take that from the Department of Agriculture or the Department of Commerce or the Department of the Interior, which ever it may be. We could not pretend in our small handful of people to have experts on any of those things. We have to rely on the rest of the Government.

If I may just take a case, when Mr. Attlee came over here, one of the things he stressed was his concern about the sulfur situation. When Mr. Petsch was here from France, he was concerned about the sulfur situation. When Mr. Holland, Prime Minister of New Zealand, was here, the only person I think he called on other than Cabinet level people was myself to raise the question of sulfur.

We in the State Department do not pretend to have any expert on sulfur, but we have to have someone who knows enough about it to know where the experts are in the Government so that we can carry on the necessary discussion with these individuals.

Mr. PRESTON. You rely on OIT for that?

Mr. THORP. Yes, sir. In this particular case, we worked very closely also with Mr. Wilson's group in the Office of Defense Mobilization, because sulfur happens suddenly to have become one of the very critical materials in the world.

REQUEST FOR INCREASED PERSONNEL

Mr. PRESTON. Your division has operated at its maximum efficiency, I assume, during the past fiscal year.

Mr. THORP. To the best of my ability, it has; yes.

Mr. PRESTON. It has performed its function for which it has responsibility; has it not?

Mr. THORP. I think so.

Mr. PRESTON. Why do you need extra people, then, other than for what you said a while ago, in the Office of International Trade Policy?

Mr. THORP. That is the main reason. If it was the same world as it was a year ago, I do not think I would be asking for extra people. I might even be getting along with a few less.

Mr. PRESTON. Oh, do not make that mistake.

Mr. THORP. Well, we have done that in the past in our economic group.

Mr. PRESTON. You would become very unique in the Government if you ever started reducing your strength, Mr. Thorp, and would be the envy of entire official Washington if you were able to retrench. Do you think you can do the job again this coming fiscal year with what you have had, with the personnel you have had, by a little extra exertion, a little more effort on the part of the people in your department?

Mr. THORP. No, sir; I do not think we can.

Mr. PRESTON. Let us see who would suffer. Suppose we do not give it to you: Who is going to suffer; what is going to be affected? Mr. THORP. I think the only thing that will happen, to take a specific case, will be that it will not be possible to work out as rapidly with other governments the increased supplies of materials which are needed for the stockpile, which is a very important matter. For instance, manganese from India has come to be a source of about one-third of our manganese. It has stepped up from 200,000 to 600,000. That has been a result of two types of activity. One is the procurement agencies of the Government going to the producers of manganese, but it was not entirely within their control, because manganese is something which moves by rail to the water, and the bottleneck was the railroad, and the railroad was Government-owned.

So the responsibility for getting the Government to step up its handling of the railroad fell on the State Department to negotiate with the Government. This is a very important thing today.

Mr. PRESTON. Are you testifying now, Mr. Thorp, that, if we do not give you these additional people, this Government is going to suffer a shortage of manganese as a result?

Mr. THORP. No. I am giving you an illustration of the kind of service these people will perform.

Mr. PRESTON. I am asking where will be the effect-what specific spot. Put your finger on that, if you will.

Mr. THORP. I think I would have to answer that in the same way you would answer the question as to where famine hits a population. You cannot pick out the people who will die as a result, but you know the total situation will be weaker.

What we do with our 300 people is to put them on the most important things. All I can say is that our responsibilities will not be fully met unless we have enough people to meet them, but I cannot answer specifically. Certainly I would not want to say that manganese, which is a key thing, would suffer, because obviously we will put the people on manganese, but it will mean perhaps someone would not be able to work on kyanite or something else. The net result is that the work would suffer, although I cannot pin it down specifically as to what we would drop out.

Mr. PRESTON. How many man-hours a year would nine people give you?

Mr. WILBER. 18,720.

Mr. PRESTON. 18,720?

Mr. WILBER. Yes, sir.

RELATIVE VALUE OF MAN-HOURS

Mr. PRESTON. Just how important these man-hours are relatively I do not know. Mr. Thorp, do you have any way of checking up on your employees? Do you have any way of knowing whether your people come to work on time every day, or whether some of them come in late?

Mr. THORP. I cannot testify on that, but I do know that when I call on them early in the morning they are there. Insofar as those I have checked are concerned, they are there early in the morning.

Mr. PRESTON. But you do not have any way of knowing whether those who are supposed to be there at 8:30 in the morning are on duty; have you?

Mr. THORP. As far as I am concerned, I have an executive officer who is responsible for seeing that the office is run efficiently, and I do know that we have time and attendance reports in our various offices.

Mr. PRESTON. But if a person is 30 minutes late coming in-and I realize that this is not peculiar to your shop-if a person is 30 minutes late, does anybody dock that person for being 30 minutes late? They are not docked for that; are they?

Mr. MACE. Yes; that is regarded as absence.

Mr. PRESTON. As a 30-minute absence?

Mr. MACE. Yes, sir; he is charged with 30 minutes' absence-
Mr. WILBER (interposing): He is charged with an hour.