{"id":3183,"date":"2012-12-16T02:07:04","date_gmt":"2012-12-16T08:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=3183"},"modified":"2012-12-16T02:07:04","modified_gmt":"2012-12-16T08:07:04","slug":"this-week-in-the-war-16-22-december-1940-the-garden-hose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=3183","title":{"rendered":"This week in the War, 16&#8211;22 December 1940: The Garden Hose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?attachment_id=3244\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3244\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-3244\" title=\"FDR signs Lend-Lease bill, giving aid to Britain and China [Public domain, wikimedia]\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Wroosevelt1.jpg\" width=\"438\" height=\"369\" srcset=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Wroosevelt1.jpg 438w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Wroosevelt1-150x126.jpg 150w, https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Wroosevelt1-300x252.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 438px) 100vw, 438px\" \/><\/a>At a press conference on 17 December 1940, President Roosevelt attempted to lead American opinion away from strict neutrality with the idea of lending ones garden hose to a neighbour whose house is on fire.<\/p>\n<p>It was a first step towards the introduction of the Lend-Lease bill to supply aid to Britain (and China).<\/p>\n<p>He wouldn&#8217;t want his neighbour to pay for the hose, Roosevelt said&#8212;but merely to return it when the fire was extinguished.<\/p>\n<p>The analogy was shaky from the point of view that the hose might be wrecked (Lend-Lease materials, planes, tanks, and so forth, were likely to be destroyed in battle), but bang on the money in the sense that lending the hose to save a neighbour&#8217;s house might stop the fire from spreading to ones own property. Americans were increasingly coming to regard Britain as their &#8216;front line of defence&#8217; against totalitarianism.<\/p>\n<p>The picture above shows FDR signing the Lend-Lease bill into law, 11 March 1941.<\/p>\n<p>Roosevelt&#8217;s made his well-known &#8216;arsenal of democracy&#8217; comment a week or so later, during one of his famous fireside chats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At a press conference on 17 December 1940, President Roosevelt attempted to lead American opinion away from strict neutrality with the idea of lending ones garden hose to a neighbour whose house is on fire. It was a first step &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=3183\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[351,350,261,54],"class_list":["post-3183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-war-ii","tag-arsenal-of-democracy","tag-garden-hose","tag-lend-lease","tag-roosevelt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3183"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3266,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183\/revisions\/3266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}