Now, if the public policies of the period dried up the flow of capital to private industry, or even reduced it to a trickle, the Arms Embargo Act put the finishing touches upon the process. All Chancellor Hitler had to do to make a “belligerent” out of France was to open war on France, and since the French were now buying aircraft in the United States, the sooner he did the better. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland; on September 5, France declared war on Germany. President Roosevelt immediately issued his proclamation of neutrality, thus putting the Act into effect and cutting off shipments to belligerents. Meanwhile, however, the frantic French, desperate by now, had, in a last-minute effort to buy time, insisted upon our creating a new plant and accepting new contracts. Our only course under the circumstances was to insist that they advance the entire amount of the cost of the new facilities, some eight million dollars, and finance the additional contracts for aircraft by advancing working capital under terms agreeable to us. However, under French law, the state was prohibited from investing its funds in a capital outlay on foreign shores. Further, the French, at the time, were pursuing the opposite policy at home; they were expropriating and nationalizing their own industry—a policy that reduced the country from a position of world leadership, following World War I, to one of abject dependence upon American aviation in World War II. How they could agree to go ahead with us under the circumstances we could not see, especially with the Arms Embargo Act hanging over them. But go ahead they did, and under our terms. Meanwhile, during the protracted negotiations, we went right ahead, in our new War Plans Division, with all the blueprints and schedules, working in close collaboration with our architect, Albert Kahn. We broke ground for the new French plant on October 10, 1939, pushing automobiles out of the parking space on which we had determined to build it. The shop was to have an area of some 300,000 square feet and be tooled to handle about 300 engines per month of our 1830 model. Since this was an engine rated at approximately 1,000 horsepower, we figured that we were going to get 300,000 horsepower per month out of the new plant; in three months we could build enough engines to generate the power of Niagara. Title to the new facility would rest with United Aircraft. On November 5, 1939, Congress repealed the Arms Embargo Act. Shortly afterward, the British government came into the market for aircraft. This was a surprise, for but a short time earlier, Lord Beaverbrook, then visiting this country, had snorted at the suggestion that Britain might have to look to America for assistance. Yet Sir Henry Self, formerly of the British Air Ministry, arrived in Washington and joined with M. René Plevin of France, in a new coordinated procurement program.