http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/jan40/f03jan40.htm
Royal Navy seizes US ship
Wednesday, January 3, 1940 www.onwar.com
In the North Atlantic... British warships detain the American SS Mormacsun.
The Winter War... Finnish aircraft drop three million pamphlets on Leningrad. The Finnish government claims to have destroyed 400 Soviet tanks and brought down 150 Soviet planes since the fighting began.
On the Western Front... In the Vosges area, French patrols ambush two German detachments and take several prisoners.
In Washington... President Roosevelt requests $1.8 billion for national defense in his annual budget request to Congress.
In Berlin... A conciliatory letter from Mussolini transmitted to Hitler in an effort to offset the Italian condemnations of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The Duce, however, maintains that “the solution of your Lebensraum is in Russia and not elsewhere.”
In Ireland... The Eire government introduces legislation to detain members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) without trial.
Another request for $1.3 billion more will come in a few months.
This compares to the previous 1938 request for approx. $500 million.
The war all told will cost the US neighborhood of $500 billion.
And that was cheap, compared to the relative costs, in blood and treasure, paid by such countries as the Soviet Union and Germany.