Spartan Out

President Agustin P. Justo last week was like an Argentine juggler adroitly balancing on his head a hamper full of snarling tomcats.

The tomcats were the Argentine Cabinet, fuming over whether Finance Minister Alberto Hueyo should be allowed to continue the Spartan policy he announced 18 months ago: "No moratorium, no waste, no inflation!"

To Senor Hueyo, schooled under English financiers, these policies are axioms of sound treasury finance. "Now that the dollar has fallen [more than 30%]," he recently declared, "we can definitely continue to meet our foreign obligations''--mostly in dollars.

Other Cabinet ministers, backed by a potent section of the Buenos Aires Press, clamored for a policy of "Follow Roosevelt into inflation!" They not only badgered Finance Minister Hueyo, they went on strike, refusing to submit estimates of the sums needed to conduct their departments. Finally into the quarrel pitched Vice President Julio A. Roca.

Senor Roca went to England last winter when the Ottawa Conference agreements threatened to ruin Argentina's meat trade with the United Kingdom. He brought back a treaty in which Argentina promised to reduce her tariffs on some 200 items of British exports (including automobiles) in return for which the United Kingdom promised to take almost as much Argentine meat as in previous years. Proudly Vice President Roca boasted that, so far as Argentine meat was concerned, he had almost nullified the Ottawa Accord supposed to favor British Dominion meat exporters. Indignantly Finance Minister Hueyo protested that the 200 tariff concessions would so cut Argentina's customs' revenues that the Government could not carry on. Last fortnight the British Board of Trade, having waited patiently for three months, put pepper into Argentina's Cabinet crisis by demanding that the Anglo-Argentine treaty be either ratified or rejected.

In the final Cabinet squabble other ministers forced on Finance Minister Hueyo an assignment to go before Congress and defend the treaty which he so detested. In a cold, quivering rage he resigned. The treaty went to the Chamber of Deputies anyway, passed after hot debate by a vote of 61 to 41. Meanwhile the Argentine Senate (which has yet to debate the treaty) passed (13-10-9) a bill reviving in Argentina the recently abolished death penalty for treason, premeditated murder, arson and bombing. Amid greater turmoil than ever in the Buenos Aires Press, Argentines resumed debate on whether they can find solution of their difficulties in inflation.

Except that Argentina, being nonindustrial, has no industrial crisis she was suffering last week much as was the U. S. before President Roosevelt's inauguration. Paupered farmers recently forced the Government to forbid foreclosures temporarily. Bills to inflate the national currency have several times been before Congress. In this emergency last week President Justo temporized, unwilling to appoint either an inflationist or an anti-inflationist as Finance Minister. He turned the office over to a virtual caretaker, Minister of Justice & Education Manuel de Iriondo, making him Finance Minister ad interim. To test public opinion the President announced that Argentina will continue to follow the policy of "No moratorium, no waste and no inflation!" That this policy is President Justo's own no Argentine doubted, but he was believed to be weakening, tempted to embrace the price-raising policy of President Roosevelt.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.