ABSTRACT
Keynes’ account of the talks about Stage II and the subsequent report of Anderson and Lyttleton to the War Cabinet about them were both quite optimistic and self-satisfied in tone. Frank Lee was more cautious than Keynes in his assessment of the talks, and he was rather bitter about the way the FEA had obstructed the British aim of achieving a clean break with existing export controls; he commented in connection with this that Cox, ‘has again shown that he is willing to subordinate any question of principle to political expediency’. The US Chiefs of Staff, the military side of Lend-Lease under Somervell and their political spokesmen Leahy and Stimson, took the lead in restricting Lend-Lease supplies to Britain. In the State Department William Clayton, recently arrived from the Department of Commerce, became Undersecretary of State in charge of foreign economic policy.
