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February 16 1946
omd that
the
members, generally, favored civilian
trol. Then he hustled
down
to the White House far
a,conference with :President Truman. H e laid the .facts
on the table and tactfully suggested that now was
the
e for
the
President to make a clear-cut statement
on
It came like a bolt out
of
the blue to the army crowd.
In a le t ta o Senatm IMCMahon M i . Truman said:
(
1
The atomic-control commission should be composed
“exclusively
of
civilians.” ( 2 ) “The govemmentrmustrbe
the exclusive owner and producer :of fissioDable mate-
rials.’’
3 ) “It
is essential that devices utilizing atomic
energy be made fuUy available fur private development
through compulsory, non-exdusive licensing of Frivate
patents,
and
regulation
of
‘royalty fees to -insure-
their
reasonableness.” 4) Xegislatiun must assure genuine
fseedom
to
con&&
independent^
research and guarantee
at controls Over e dissemination of information will
nat stifle sdemtific~research.” (5 ) “The fpropused) com-
mjssion .shuuld b e
in
a ,positian to carry out at once any
189
internationa1 agreementsrelating to inspection, contro
of production, dissemination of information,
and simi-
lar areas of international action.”
The T,mman letter and th e smooth maneuvering
of
Senator McMahon have
put &e
Groves men on th e spot
They cannot obby openly agaimt t?he McMahon bill.
Their propaganda campaign to revive the aMay-J.ohnsu
bill, which even Mr. Johnson refers to sheepishly as “bhe
so-called MayJohnson bill,” has been sipped
i n
the
bud.
What :is left ifor
th m
s undercover sniping. And
there
is
always, as a Jast resort, khe possibility of putting
pxessure on President Truman
to
name “right
guys”
to
the atomic commission;
The Resid ent ‘left h e door wide open in his ,letter
While
h e
said the
commission should
be compsed
of
civilians,
h e
inserted m e dangerous sentence,
“Thi
should not be interpreted
,to
disqualify ’former military
personnel from membership.”
Leslie
Groves, .civilian
is mot likely to &ink differently from Major ,Genera
Groves.
The
batde
;has not
been won.
I
BY
STANLEY ROSS
Correspondent
for
t he As s o r i d ed
Press in
Bzrenos Aires from 1943
bo 1945.Mr. Ross
haS
also
writtetz on Argenfiina for Collier’s, the American,
and
other
muga-‘uzes
NLESS
something
unforeseen
happens
to
pre-
vent it, Colonel Juan D. Perbn will
be
“elected”
President
of
Argentina on February
24.
And he.
will
remain
d e r
of thzt rich nationuntil ejected
by;
death or revolution.
Against Perbn are the our main democratic parties-
Radicals, Socialists, Progressive Democrats, and Commu-
nists, the Radicals alone controlling a majority of the
nation’s votes under 3 fair ballot. Against him too, are
the greater part of ‘the middle class, the students, ~prob-
ably th,reelfifths
of
organized lxbur, and those vested in-
terests
of
Argentina whiah are not controlled by German
or British big business.
But
it will take more than even
this formidable combination of interests to oust
Per&,
for the Colonel s a
&earless and
resourceful man, de-
termined to ’win the “election” by ballots or bullets.
JuanPerbn must not be mistaken fur justanother
Latin American dictator wieh
a
nickle-plated personality
and an ironclad conscience. He is providing safe haven
for a band
of
international bankers, munitions makers,
cartel directors, and warmongers Who have transferred
theirheadquarters from he ormer Axis capit+
to
,Buenos Aires, togetherwith heir fortunes, formulas,
and blueprints. At home ‘Perbn is suppopted
by
an ar-
mored police force as powerful as the army,
by
the
Cabholic church, and
by
the political caadillor
who
-fo
sixteen years ‘have counted votes their own way,
or
neve
bothered to count them.
Perbn first appeared on the international scene when
he was Argentine military attach4pin Chile. One nigh’t in
1936
police ,broke nto his apartment in Santiago and
caught ‘ k n turning over British and Chilean “militar
secrets
to a
German agent. He
was
expelled from.CI.de
and to his chagrin learned later that the “secrets,” fo
wh,ich he had reputedly paid 70,000 pesos, were spuriou
anyway. The incident, however, did not ruin
his
career
in 1939 hisgovernment attached him to theGerman
army, and fur two years he stamped over Europe, goose
stepping into Paris with the conquering Nazis. Then h
returned home tu plan the seizure of his own govern-
ment and lay the basis for a group of Nazi-dominated
governments in Latin America.
This plan is still in effect, sponsored
by
the same influ
ences which num re d Hitler andMussolini-the Krupps
Fritz Thyssen, Fritz
Mandl,
I G.
Farben, Siemens,
So
fina, vast enterprises with semi-autonomous branches
al
over the world. These interests, -with a cache
of
seve
billion dolars of war loot hidden or invested in Argen
tina, cann0.t afford to’have e r k uverthrown at thepl l
or
anywhere else.
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‘190
Perbn ha5 kept Argentina on e verge of civil war
since he returned from Germany
in
1942 and founded
a
secret lodge of some fifty colonels and majors lcnuwn
as the G.
0 U.
(Group of United Officers). Its program
was to “replace the moribund sinecuristgenerals and
corrupt, fraudulent politicans.” Its secret statement
of
aims, written
by
Per6n one month
before
the lodge
seized the governmefit, outlines 0 plan for conquest and
coalition that would make Argentina the ruling nation
of the continent. “The struggle of Hider in peace and
war shall be our guide,” runs one
of bhe
slogans.
For nine months a,f,ter he
G.
0 U. became the gov-
ernment Perbn allowed President Pedro
P.
Ramirez,a
colorless general, to get the grit out of bhe political ma-
chinery.But his innate craving for rec6gnitionfinally
causedhim to stepout rom behind the Presidential
&air to a position in front
of
it. On one occasion he
modestly said,
“I
take orders from President Ramirez.
I
am
merely a soldier.” A week @er, scenting a
Ramirez
plot to seize actual power,he pounded his chest and told
reporters: “This
is
the government
of
the
G.
0
U.
and
I a m he
G.
0 U. my desk
I
have the signed undated
hignations of 3,300
of
the army’s
,3,600
officers,
and
the others
do
not makter.”
This incident followed Argentina’s diplomaticrupture
wi,th &e Axis, n January
26,
1944.Per& had vigorously
opposed the break until the United States South Atlantic
fleet moved ominously into the La Plata estuary he then
reluctantly consented. But when he learned @hat
Ram-
irez’s Foreign Minister, General Albert0 Gilbert, was
planning economicmeasures against the Germans in .
Argentina,
he
staked furiuusly into the Foreign Min-
istry, drew
his
sword, and
ran
Gilbert out of the
build-
ing and the Cabinet.
Deprived of Gilbert’s support, President Ramirez
made
a
desperate attempt to oust the
G.
0. . On the
afternoon of February 25 he ordered the resignation of
War Minister General Edelmiro J. Parrell and‘of Far
tell’s “assistant,” Perbn. Farrell o’beyed. Perbn did
not.
Instead, he fixed the President’s messenger coldly with
his eye and said, “Inform the unhappy ones who sent
you that they will never get me out of here alive ”
That night six uf Pe rh ’s generals burst intoRamirez’s
s’tudy,p s n hand, and forced him
to
sign over his
powers to Perbn’s g a w b puppet, General Farrell.
Since’then Perbn
has
been boss. Deftly he maintains
his power and plays off his enemies against one another.
He has flirted with capital and labor, with the moderates,
the conservatives, and &e leftists, and all along
has
been
in close contact with the
Nazis.
He has brewed elaborate
plots causing Cabinet convulsions by which sixty minis-
ters were
cast
out
in ‘two ears. When he realized &at
he
could not-gain
f u l l
controi
of the
army, he began to sap
its strengbh, building up the Buenos A i r s and federal
police forces, famous for their brutality. The mechanized
police, reinforced
by
countless discharged ’soldiers, num-
The NATION
bas
40,000
and is a. compact organization; e army h
been
cut
to 60,000
and
is spread
over
the
countr
Furthermore the army is controlled by the Condor Legio
a Nazi-trained Gestapo through which Pehn learns
and aborts incipient revolts. Among its advisers is Maj
General Hans Steudemann, who fle,d from Berlin
as
t
Allied armies approached4teudemark is one of
group of German officersnow working for Per6n unde
Argentine names w i h citizenship papers to match. Th
powerful police force stood Perbn ‘in good stead as
October, when his own
ranks
were so weakened 6y h
treatment of the army that a group
of
youthful office
forced him out of his ufour Cabinet postsand jailed hi
for
,two
days. Wibh the aidof the police Perbn escap
and announced his candidacy for bhe Presidency.
Today, with mutiny still festering in e army, and t
country threatened with civil war, P e r h is detefimine
to remain , d e r of Argentina. He has risked his li
many himes in the past forby years ;toget within strikin
distance of his goal, and
I
do not
think he
will be
r
moved alive.
~
PRIVATE
LIFE
Perdn was born fifty years ago on the estancid of h
father a geologist and pioneer settler in bleak and i
Patagonia.
As
a boy he fought
the
local Indian youth
broke wild broncos, lassoed ostriches and wild animal
with She gaucho’s bolrrr. He forded icy streams in su
zeroweather, then racedagainst
the
wind until h
bombacbas froze stiff. At sixteen he was sent to milita
college,
where
he-was an indifferent student but
a
cra
soldier. His classm,atescalled him “he man who i
vented work.”
As
a
sublieutenant Perbn’s trigger temper and-criticis
of
army red
tape
brought him before a court martial,
where he had to prove he was not a Communist. On
the knowledge that he
was
fencing champion of
t
army, a title he held for sixteen
years
restrainedhis
fellow-officers from challenging him
to
drequent duel
A first lieutenant at twenty, or a
decade
he was shunte
about among the less desirable posts of
the
interior un
he was admitted to
the
Superior \Var College.
By
192
as a captain at.tached to
t he
General‘ St , Per6nhad
become a serious student of tactics, avrading e
fan
of General Wihelm Faupel
of
the German army.
by the German General Staff, which even then was pla
ming eventual conquest ofLatin America. Faupel becam
in turn secretary
to
the Argentine Inspector General an
a general in the Brazilian, Chilean, and Peruvian armie
It was Faupel who later persuaded Franco
to
start t
Spanishcivilwar,promising German aid, and it w
Faupel
who
in
1930
piloted hms disciple, Inspector Ge
eral Jose Felix Uriburu, into the Argentine Presiden
in a revolution that
se t
the pattern for army dictatorsh
throughout Latin America during the thirties.
Faupel at
the
time helped Per6n become s s i s t a
Generd Faupel
had
been sent to Argentina in
191
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February 16,
1346
Minister -of War in the Uribura Cabinet-the same
job
Per6n took when his G. 0 U. case to power bhirteen
years later in an almost exact: repetition of the Uxiburu
revolt. Under Faupel’s guidance Per6n became instructor
in
military history and strategy at
the
Superior War Cd-
lege. He wrote two textbooks so smacking of the Prussian
strategist Clausewitz, whosk “On War” was h e mil’itary
bible of the Junkers, that he has been acpsed
of
plagi-
arism. In one book Per6n concludes that “war ,is an in-
evitablesocial 6henomenon”; in he other
h e
defends
Germany
in
athe First World War, blaming the United
States for . h e Kaiser’s defeat and urging Argentina to
insure United States neutrality when Argentina eventu-
,allyp s
to war. During peace time, he said, “the coun-
try must have ,the acmy
of
its politics or the politics
of
its army. The politicalaspirations
of
a nationare as
strong as the army’s,power o achieve them.” He advised
preparation
not
for war in general but for “a particular
war.”
What
particular
war
Per& is preparing for
is
hard
to
,.say, although ,he
has
for
,the
first
time
in -Argentinehis-
tory
fortified the Ghilean border and has stationed troops
along the Erazilian frontier. When,the
G.
0 U. came to
power in 1943, Argentina had
an army
of 50,000 men,
a large ,but outdated navy,
and
an
air
force with
fifty
first-class planes. The military budget that year had been
only 260,900,000
pesos.
In 1945 Perbn spent 2,000,000-
000 pesos on the army,sw‘elling the national budget
from 1,525,000,000 to
3,550,000,000
pesos to do it.
In
the early months of
1945 the
armycontainednearly
100 000 men, and 120 factories are todayproducing
weapons ‘from German blueprints.
Even the
-40 000 000
esos collected by .public sub-
scription
for
the victirnsof the earthquake
Thich
de-
stroyed .the mountain city
of San
Juan in January, 1944,
were diverted to Perh’s arms program. The Gelonel’s
campaign for aid for San Juanresidentshad
been
so
intense that people referred to Ithe city
as
“San
Juan
de
Per6n.” Later the stories changed tone. One relates that
when the actressEvaDuar,tecame home
,one
day
she
.found a
mink
coat on herbed.
‘:Now
what saint
in
heaven could have brought this?”
she
exclaimed.
Pec6n,
behind the curtains, stuck out his head and replied, “San
Juan.”
The
Colonel
has
just
ended
a
two-year
a f a i ye
and
ten
,years of widowerhood ‘by marrying the twenty-six-year-
old Eva and moving her into
a
mansion near Ruenos
Aires, where a pair of society spinsters are teaching her
ithe
manners
of a
first lady
of
the land. Until &e
mar-
riage Per6n and Evita occupied separate apartments in
the
same .building in a middle-class section of Buenos
Aires. Per6n still keeps his ‘home there-a modest, airy,
five-xoom apartment which he shares with his daughter,
Maria Inez, and an ancient a1.f breed housekeepernamed
Kotning, who ‘raised Per6n as
a
child ,in Patapnia.
Per& isvery fond of
his
nineteen-year-old daughter,
3-3
who,
like his bride,
is
an
auburn-haired
.beauty. He
us
ually lunches
with Maria
ha
at
the apartment, wit
Maria herself waiting
on
the table, singing aloud an
chatting gaily.
The Colonel leads a
brisk
life. He jumps out of
bed
a
six, exercises for half an hour, and reads the m a i l an
newspapers, finishing them while being driven to hi
election-caqpaign offices in BuenosAka. here h e shed
his tie and jacketandworksfeverishly until 1 :3Q in
terviewing,ictating,canningocuments, pqepariril
speeches.
A p
‘lunchand
a
short siesta at the apartmen
he
works un ti iP
10
p. m. and i’f he
has
nu speech t
make or meeting tb attend, takes papers home m d goe
on working
until
long after midnight. Busy
as
h e s h
always manages t o look impeccably groomed, &is dar
hair combed back, b,is nails manicured. Women a&+r
his physique-six feet tall, a stocky 210 pounds-his
winning smile, and his flashing black eyes; his face i
mund with a sharp nosehandhigh forehead.
‘Men
admir
him for
his
horsemanship, boxing, skiing, and fencing
and most people are influenced
bjr
his concentrate
speech,
firm voice,
.and
well-chosen.words,which
h
underlines with voice and hands.Foreigners like him
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d92
The
NATION
&ion that he speak far Per6n at pubIic meetings. He told
a Eriend $thathe had intended
it
flee &e country as
soon
as
released but that his family was hostage.
From
con-
stantly repeating praises af Per6n he has apparently be-
gun
to
8believewhat he says and
has
tried hard to get his
friends in &e Railroad Brotherbod to jump on
the
band-wagon.
The railroadmen have been Per6n’s toughest labor op-
pments.
Th
e y ap-
plauded his promises
of
higher pay and
bonuses but
d m n p -
ingly defeated h i s
candidates i n lthe
brotherhood elections
in favor
of
a
slate of
unknown laborers
whom he had hhought
harmless
enough to
’
allow
to enter the
race. The Colonel set
aside
h e elections,
Per&
charging ithe winners
were Chmnunists and
&odd be jailed. When new elections were held, with
only Per6n’s men as candidates, the voters shunned the
polls
so generally that Per6n’s men did
not
get enough
votes to legalize their appearance on the ballots, and a
da te of write-ins-this im’e real Communists-carried
the election.
Per6n’s thick-skinned Secretariat of Labor then circu-
lated a huge embossed bo with blanlcpages for the
200,000
.railroadmen’s signatures to a statement thank-
in g the Gl on el for his beneficence to organized labor.
The book
came back without a single signature, word
having been passed khat
i f
Per6n’s few admirers
in
the brotherhood signed it,
t q
would wish they hadn’t.
Despite his t a c k Per6n has given labor advantages
its anion leaders never gained in decades
of
campaign-
ing. H e has decreed minimum wages and decent living
conditions for agricultural workerswho for centuries
have lived in Ifeudal peonage; wbite-collar workers, news-
papermen, shop girls, and factory hands have obtained
raises, vacations,
and
healthful working conditions. The
most recent decree, ordering all concerns to raise wages
approximately
30
per cent, was received wirh ild acclaim
by even
these
workers who hate bhe Colonel. It has be-
come a prime campaign weaipon of the Labor, Party,
created to sponsor Per6n’s candidacy.
The Labor Party launhed its campaign on Decem,ber
14 1945,
before
100,000
persons gathered armnd he
obelisk in the center of Buenos A,ires. The
meeting
wu
a masterpiece of organization. Factories were closed at
&e suggestion of the police, leets of trucks and
buses transported workers to the appointed place. Some
40 000
gwermnent empl,ofrees, hd ud in g 10 000 plain-
clothes police, were obliged
t~
attend; he crowd w
ringed by two cordons of uniformed police. Especiall
large was the representation from the manufacturing ci
of Avellaneda, adjoining Buenos Aires, whose politic
boss Alberto Barcelo, head
of the
city’s labor and gra
rackets, has thrown in his lot with Per6n.
In
one
Ave
laneda district Barcelo’s mendo not even open the ball
boxes. They prepare substitute sets of stuffedb’oxes an
merely burnhe genuine ones when the polls close
After wild ’demonstrations for their favorite, the crow
paraded thmrough the ckpitalshuubing
the
phrases t h
nationalists had drummed into heir ears for the pa
bwo years: “Argentines yes; Y a nk e e s no ” “Death to th
Jeys ”
“Perbn yes; Braden no ”
r‘Mate yes;
whiskey
no
But well coordinated’ as are
Perdn’s
meetings, h
principal weapon is the organized disorder,
so
reminisce
of
ihe
Nazis, that rears i t s head every t h e democra
elements gafher in the public squares. Small disturbanc
start in the suburbs and spread toward the center
of
t
city, increasing in violence until
they
reach the meetin
place. There armed youths
of
the Nationalist
Youth
A
liance fire from roof tops
or
public buildings into th
’crowd and cause such confusion that the police find
expedient to iinish the job
by
speeding trucks throug
the square, spraying the people with tear gas, and .havi
mounted men ride ,them down wi,th
sabers
swinging.
took
only 200 arm,ed Peronistas to
break up
the Dem
ocratic Union rally
of
200,000 on December 8, wh
dour persons were killed and forty injured.
OPPONENTS AND SUPPORTERS
The opposition to Perdn is disrupted by such tactic
and further handicapped because its only cohesive for
i s
its dislike of the Colonel. Peronista agents, plentiful
supplied wibh money. for bribes, have even wormed the
.way into the nation-wide democratic underground, Patr
Libre. The milikarybranch
of
Patria
Libre
the
Mov
miento de Liberaci6n Nacional, has been all but d
stroyed
by
the Condor Legion.
In the election Per6n will be opposed by a rath
colorless ex-senator mmed
Jos6 P.
Tadmrini, who
backing
b y
the four major parties
ha s
deeply impress
the army. Many officers are angered by Per6n’s allianc
with the political bosses whose corrupt prackices he h
assailed in rallying officers
for
the revolution: His bi
‘for labor support have alienated many others, for mo
ofhcerscome from he landowning families. They a
m w
concernedover his plan to confiscate and divi
among the peons the 80,600-acre e.rtan. of Rubustia
Patron Costas, standard bearer of the Nation21 Dem
cratic (conservative) Party. Patron Costas
was
to ha
been
t h e Presidential candidate of
&he
anded oligarc
just before the G.0 U.
.took
over. And alihough t
conservatives are not included in the Democratic Unio
they are strongly opposed to Per6n.’ Last onth the
par
charged that themilitary government was spending pu
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Febmary
-16, 1946
lic
funds
and using p o k e
power
in an open political
campaign for
t h e
Colonel. It proved that bhe government
printing presses were turning out propaganda wxitten by ’
Per6n:s fuur hundred publicity men, all on the public
But it
is
doubtful whether these conservative officers
can counterbalance -the strength anddetemination of
Per6n’s backers-though one young captain among them
told
an ofkcers’ meeting he would person dy kill u b
if
the
elections were
not
honest. P e r h is supported by
President Farrell, long on &e pay roll
of
the
German
Club; Yice-Fxesident
Juan
Bistarini, whom Hitler deco-
rated with the Order of &e German Eagle; Chief of
Staff Carlos van der Bedce,
brother
of the chief Nazi
.agent in South America; and Police Chief Culonel Fil-
.omen0 Velasco. Every ‘one
of
these
four
men has spent
a t least
tiyo
yeam with the-Germ+n
a m y .
Velasco, most rabidly Nazi
of
them
all,
has a reputa-
tion for cruelty and falseness; it is said of him that ‘Ihe
uses Lies as women use perfume.” At t h e very momkllt
,that police were breaking into the home of the last uni-
versity restor still at
liberty,
he was blandly telling
news-
papermen &at no rectors were being arrested.
On
the
.same night in October the editors of La P r e m a and La
Nacio’n were so dragged off to jail,
as
were two former
Fa-eign Ministers, one of
them
Carlos Saavedra Lamas,
winner of the
1336
Nobel :pesce prize.
The
t r u b h
is that V.elascr, and Per& are:beginning
to
fear the public temper. Revolutions are born of hunger
and misery,,and there is little hunger in overfed Buenos
Aires, but beneath layers o
materialistic fat the Argen-
tines are a brave and liberty-loving people. Since las t
September, when half
a
million people marched past
the
War Ministry chanting “Death fio Per6n,” the Colonel
has watched popular feeling rise, and
he is
racing against
time to get the elections over.
pay
roll.
WHAT KIND OF RULER WILL HE
MAICE?
If Fer6n’s plans are successful, what can be expected
of him as a ruler? One cannot tell
from
what he says. He
callsfhimself a liberal but in the same:breathasserts,
“My
government is one,of might, not light.” He fought like
.amadman against a diplomatic break with the Axis dur-
ing thewar, yet a week later said to a -friend,“The Allies
are going
to
win this war,
so
we ,might as well make
.friends with them.”
*to restore civilian government, but on
the
same day h e
sent
to
G. 0 U. members “Secret Memorandum
No. 10”
-assuring them he axmy would lwp- i t shshpoiitical
jobs.
Patria Libre published this memorandum in an under-
ground newspaper, and Perbn, purple with rage, an-
mounced to the
G.
0 U., “If
I
.find ?he oficer
who
re-
leased fiat memorandum
I’ll
have him shot ’’
,Flirting with Argentine big business, Per6n has as-
’ sured t he
Stock
Exchange and the Agricultural
Society
In trying to obtain Radical Party support he promised
193
.that he stands for the defense of their interests
agains
cummuism. A year ago he invited leading capitalists to
a
banquetb b i d for their aid. But when .their spokesmen
flatly said he was a greater menace than the Argentine
brand of communism, the Colonel broke
up
the dinne
by shouting, “It do.esa’.t matter .if you 0.r the p p l e m
e
against
me
Z have
created
security l o r
the workers
.and
I have double security
for
myself-an army of
100 Oo
men. Who can get me out of the govern- entWho
dare
sta
a revolution? You say
you
have
95
per
cent
of
the
.people? Well, I have-
95
per cent of the army. If you
think you can overkhr.ow my 95 per cent with
yours, I
dare you
to try
it ”
banking, industrial, and agricultural associztions pub
lished large advertisements excoriating his regime. The
Colonel retasted with
a
clamp-lhepress censorship and
openly boasted that the
army
and ‘khatcrha great artm
of 1 & 0 r d ’ could crush any insurrection.
Probably Per6n’s .most sincere statements were h q s e
he made on the
.eve of
the
G.
0
U. revolution.
The army
under
him,
be said, would ‘become the
instrumentlo
Argentina’s destiny, conquering by force of arms
wha
Jose
de San Martin,
father
of Argentine indepndence,
failed to win by persuasion. Alliances would de fie .nex
step. “We .already have Paraguay; we have Bolivia
and ‘Chile.With Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Paraguay
it
will be easy
to
exert pressure on Uruguay.
These
five
nations will easily attract Brazil, because of its form of
government and the large nucleus of Germans. Brazi
fallen,
theSouth
American continent will’be-ours ”
“The
,people,” he skid “knust be inculcated with the necessary
spirit through
books,
radio, press,
and
schools,
with
the
loilaboratiun of the ,&urch.
Starting with
the
SchOOlS, the armmy regime as glas
tered the blackkids with nationalistic slogans, and
more than a year
ago
Per6n ordered all children
ove
twelve -tohave military dr i l l and instruction in national
ism. ‘School ‘children are required
daily to
recite such
slogans as “The Fatherland is always right”
and
‘:Argen
tina for Argentines only.” Per& paints a picture of
-world conquest so .enticing that already many patriotic
boys
worship him as fanatically as the German yo uh did
Hitler. They sing his anthem, “The Fourth of June,”
and wear his
emblem,
n
black condor with -wings out
stretched, almost a counterpart
of
the
German
eagle.
The
Catholic church
has
been successfully wooed with
aJdecree hat Catholic religious instruction shall be,given
in the schools by priests, a practice eliminated ‘from the
public-school system fifty years ago when Argentine
ed
ucation was reorganized along lines drawn ‘by {Hotac
Mann. As War :Minister, Per6n has commissioned the
Virgin Mary and a dozen &her Saintly Virgins as ful
generals in
the
,A,rgentine army. Their images are dec
-orabed with the insignia
of
their rank, and every soldie
who
passes a chur& containing one of the brass-bedecke
The following week 862 of Argentha’s 937 business
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’194
statues must hak and salute. The ecclesiastical authorities
-have publicly announced their support of Per6n and in-
structed the people to vote against candidates of the
Democratic Union because it includses the Communists.
Per6n’s speeches read well. They could be set to mar-
tial musiceasily, and dailymore people beat time to
them. “Before the nation enjoys luxuries and palaces,”
he shouted over @he networks,“we must make sure that
not one single Argentine is rejected for army service for
malnutrition. We are famuus for improving the breed
of cattle, sheep, and horses.
W e
hould have improved
&e breed ofmen . . ., because if we must
oppose
foreign ambitions, men, not cattle,
will do
the fighting.
A,rgentinamust show
those
who have ambitions of con-
quest that to enter bhis land they will first have to
kill
fourteen million Argentines ”
Per6n tries hard to make Argentines fear Brazil and
the United States as a means of rallying the peopl’e
be-
hind him-?he device used SO effectively
by
dictators in
Europe. When I spoke with him before leaving Buenos
‘Aires, f6und
it
dfijcult
to
combat bhis &titude in
e
Ifate lf our war-time policy
of
sending lend-lease weapons
to the rest of Latin Armerica. Per6n said the United
States had helped Argentina> neighbors build a ring of
c steel around his counltry, while refusing to sell arms for
cash to Argentina because
it
maintained its traditional
policy of neutrality.
“You
gave Brazil the weapons for
a
pcwsful
amy,
upseking
e b d m c e of power iz t h e
The NATION
continent.” Uncle
Sam,
he added, had even given s
gunboats to Paraguay,
a
tiny but warlike country witho
a seaport.
Per6n said fi at Brazil, Chile, and other neighborin
states are “have-not” nations.
They
lack the what , cattl
and fertility that make Acgentina so prosperous. If the
are armed while Argentha is defenseless, he argued, &
temptation might be too great.
“‘If
heUnited Stat
guaranteed our frontiers,” he slily said, “we would n
have to
arm.
But you wouldn’t
do
that, so Argeitin
must be prepared for defense.”
All this may be true, excep,t that Per6n
is
not prepa
ing for de ense.’He s preparing, in his own words, “f
a particular war”-an aggressivewar. And he h
pawned Argentina’s future income
lor a
decade to sto
up #enough weapons
o
keep an army of
200 000
men
the
field for two years. His facturies have
t h e blueprin
for those terrible weapons that Germany was about
produce when the war in Europe ended. One of
th
plants which the Argentine army bought frum Herman
G6ring last year. is reported to have &e German plan
lor the atomic bomb. Whether o r ,not his
Is
true, Perch
army is strong enough to cause considemble damage
the soabherncontinent,where, e Colonel says,
tho
who believe in lasting peace are ntopian dreamers.
If ,the Argentine strong man becomes Argentin
President next week, the situation in South America w
. continue io be dymiiitc-x iirmkxa.
r
BY IDA
TREAT;
1
;4n AmericdB writer
who
has l i ved hz France or many years;
author
of
“The Ambored Hear t”
Paris,
{mzaty
30
Y COBBLBR in e rue du Bac said this morn-
ing that he knew why General de Gaulle had
left the government. “Lt’s because of the mquis
2.t~
Mdrs‘chal the people
who were yesterday or Pktain.
They @hid he’s their last chance. As an honest man,
he
coul,d n’t stand for bhat ”
That
comment, among
all
the comments on the Gen-
eral’s departure, was a new one,
but
I understuod what
&he abbler meant.
I
too knew recen,t converts
to
“Gad-
lis,m,” advocates of the strong hand
in
politics and deadly
opponents of the parliamentary regime. But also
knew
others of the same ilk who hoped privately tha t his going
might help to discredit the Assembly-the left Assembly
a n d ive a new swing to
e
political pendulum at the
May election,s.
That any part of he reaction shguld have rallied to
General de Gaulle is less significant than &e attitude
of
some of
his former companions who today are saying,
however regretfully, “Perhaps
it
is ‘for the best. Perha
he has finished his job and it is time for others to ta
over.” Few would have gone that far last November.
Of all this
the
Gener’al himself1s perfectly aware. F
all his celebrated aloofness, he has a pretty keen gra
on what is ,Wking place around him. And certainly
is far more sensitive
to
the defection of his friends
th
to the questionable, doubly questionable,’changeof he
on the pact of
a
fraction
Of
his former adversaries.
I
r
member once in London-I think it was during one
the
strained situations that arose out of h e North Af
can muddle-someone said to him, “Even if the Ame
cans and
t h e
British let you down, you have Fran
behind you.” And General de
Gaulle
replied drily, a
proudly, T e s t e contraire qui m’aurait dCsol6.”
At the time all France thatcounted
was
solidly behi
him, and he knew
it.
Secure in that certainty,
he
cou
confront criticism with equanimity. He stood for Franc
Ti,mes have changed. In 1946 he was no longer cor
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