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Show France is Buying j Heavily from U. S. Goods Worth Millions Are Ready for Shipment. WASHINGTON. France is buying buy-ing 700 locomotives, 9,000 trucks, and many millions of dollars worth of other goods here for shipment as rapidly as cargo space becomes available. The figures are contained in a summary released by the office of war information of economic and military assistance to France. The release emphasizes anew that French transportation suffered severely at the hands of the Germans. Ger-mans. It says that about half of the 'present French industrial labor force of more than 5,000.000 persons is threatened with unemployment because of fuel and raw material shortages due principally to lack ot transportation. Release of the figures followed a speech made by Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew in Philadelphia Phila-delphia to focus attention on what the United States is doing for France. Mr. Grew emphasized throughout that until Germany was defeated there could be no really substantial delivery of supplies to France because of the necessity for maintaining the armies on the front. But we will share what we can, he said. The release is concerned chiefly with what has been done already for France, including the arming of eight French divisions and the promise to arm eight more, the delivery de-livery of more than 200 naval craft (including harbor boats, etc.), the assignment of space equivalent to 26 ships for civilian goods shipments in the first quarter of 1945, and the promise to help rebuild the French merchant marine. The buildup of the French merchant mer-chant marine is being achieved partly by the allocation of United States ships for operation under the French flag by French crews the United States having an urgent need for crews at this time and partly by turning back French ships which have been operated by the Allies. |