Latin America

ON THE WOULD TODAY

ARGENTINE involvements are sharpening the edge of Washington’s difficulties with other American republics. Each month new contentious problems raise their heads.

A glance at the autumn developments shows the progress in acrimony. Early in September the Argentine representative on the Inter-American Political Defense Committee — the permanent body quartered at Montevideo, through which the republics are supposed to coöperate in fighting fifth-column activities — was politely informed by his colleagues that Argentine tolerance of Axis operations in the republic rendered his services useless. Inevitably, the delegate resigned at once and Argentina terminated its membership on the Committee.

The fifth-column danger was hardly increased by the withdrawal, since Argentine compliance with the Committee’s recommendations was lax to the vanishing point. But one more contact was lopped off between Buenos Aires and the inter-American front.

“X” marks Hitler’s room

Next came an explosion over the question of asylum to refugee Axis leaders and war criminals. In midsummer the State Department put out requests to neutral powers for assurances that refuge would be refused to Nazis and others on the Allies’ “wanted” list. For weeks Argentina failed to answer it. Meanwhile reports from South America indicated that lines were being laid to transfer investments to Argentina for various well-heeled future fugitives. There was some evidence that a vanguard of Nazi Party insiders might be on the scene already.

Accordingly, on September 28, Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Washington complained that, alone among the neutrals, Argentina and Portugal had failed to produce assurances on the refugee question. With this went a flat declaration that “relations between the United States and the neutral nations concerned would be adversely affected for years to come, should the Axis leaders or their vassals find safety in those countries.”

The President wades in

In Buenos Aires the Argentine Foreign Office meanwhile issued assurances to London that Axis refugees would be unwelcome. But they failed to stop the heavier blow thatwas coming. The very next day President Roosevelt, for the first time, took a direct hand in the long-running quarrel between the two capitals.

The President did not specifically mention the refugees issue, but the charge that he threw at the Argentine government was all-inclusive. Growth of NaziFascist influence and methods in an American republic at a time when final Fascist defeat is drawing nearer in Europe was, he said, “an extraordinary paradox.” The Argentine government, the President went on, “has repudiated solemn inter-American obligations” incurred “to meet the challenge of Axis aggression.” “There can be little hope for a system of international security,” he insisted, “unless we now demonstrate a capacity to develop a tradition of respect for such obligations.”

Finally, Mr. Roosevelt added a quotation from Prime Minister Winston Churchill that “this is not like some small wars in the past where all could be forgotten and forgiven,” but that neutrals will be held responsible for the parts they have played in the crisis.

Yet in spite of this battering rebuke, there was a defensive note in parts of the President’s statement.

Mr. Roosevelt insisted that Washington’s Argentine policy has been developed “in consultation with the other American republics.” And he wound up with indignant charges that the pro-Nazi press and radio in Argentina were circulating the “vicious rumor” that counsels on the Argentine question are divided.

Mr. Welles’s influence

Here we come back to the wider problems rising out of our Argentine difficulties: the difficulties they are causing us in our relations with other American republics and, to a smaller degree, in our domestic policies as well.

Mr. Roosevelt knows, of course, what the views of his recent Under Secretary of State, Sumner Welles, have been on the Argentine question. Mr. Welles has been insisting for months, in widely published writings, that, regardless of its Fascist tendencies and its sabotage of the war aims and activities of the other American powers, the government of General Edelmiro Farrell should have been diplomatically recognized.

Mr. Welles has contended that refusal to recognize is a form of political intervention in Argentina’s internal affairs. He has demanded also that a general American policy toward Argentina be decided upon in open conference of the foreign ministries of the American republics instead of through closed discussions of their diplomats with the State Department in Washington.

Mr. Welles built up tremendous influence in Latin America as the recognized administrator of the Good Neighbor policy during its most successful period. It has been no secret for months that the Welles attack on our Argentine policy has disturbed Latin American leaders in nearly every republic and tended to alienate them from us.

The Welles attack has fostered the impression in Latin America that a tremendous division of public opinion exists in the United States over the question of the “rough treatment” for Argentina, and has raised doubts as to whether the President himself is in favor of the present policy. It has aroused fears that big money and imperialistic influences in the State Department are getting ready to declare a field day of unrestricted interference in the internal affairs of Latin America.

In particular, it has encouraged the Farrell gang. In recent weeks the leaders in the politically not too bright inner circle of President Farrell’s and Vice President Perón’s junta have begun cherishing warm hopes that the Welles views might win out in a national argument and rescue them from their doghouse.

Realistically viewed, President Roosevelt’s statement is simply a vigorous response to this situation. The President did not change the policy toward the Farrell government. Mr. Roosevelt was trying to banish doubts, as far as possible, and to restore confidence in the policy by throwing his own great prestige as an inter-American statesman behind it.

The President was trying to regain support for a disciplinary program toward Argentina in Latin America by saying that it was his policy, that he and the State Department and the American people were in agreement about it, and that he approved-of the methods by which the other American governments have been persuaded officially to go along with it.

Startling effects can scarcely be expected immediately. So far as the Argentine is concerned, such a blasting rebuke can hardly fail, for the time being, to strengthen the Farrell government. In a good many other republics, the strong language might have gone better if it had been accompanied by a proposal of another open consultation between the governments. No greater risks, in any case, have been taken for many years with the leadership in inter-American affairs of either the United States or President Roosevelt. It may be many months before we shall be able to measure fully our gains or our losses.

The Argentine difficulty continues to muddy interAmerican waters because Washington’s strenuous efforts to remove it have so far proved ineffective. A year-long series of diplomatic scoldings and a few minor economic penalties, such as failing to invite Argentina to an international conference on commercial aviation this autumn, and a September order forbidding American ships on South American voyages to load Argentine cargoes, have failed either to disturb the authority of the Farrell government or to injure Argentine prosperity.

Brazil stays in line

There has been improvement in at least one prospect which looked dark recently. In spite of the virtual dismissal of the pro-Allied Brazilian Foreign Minister, Oswaldo Aranha, from office in August, Brazil has shrewdly and staunchly maintained its close connections with the United States.

President Vargas politely rejected Argentine overtures for joint military celebrations of Brazilian Independence Day on September 7. He has brought Dr. Aranha’s old enemy, the once Fascist-inclined War Minister, Gaspar Dutra, into the war scene with adroit intimacy by sending him over to Italy to inspect the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, now on the fighting lines. Vargas has obviously decided to play the game through with the winners.