''Quite Indifferent"

Some 30,000 Roman Catholics overflowed Philadelphia's Convention Hall last Sunday to hear Michael Cardinal Dougherty & others belabor the Government of Mexico for its mistreatment of their Church. Meanwhile other Catholics zealously stirred the still cold pot of a Congressional investigation of Mexican "religious persecutions" which Senator Borah had put on the fire in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Unperturbed by all this furor, a swart, mop-haired, black-toothed man in morning coat and badly-adjusted tie motored last week to the White House Executive Offices. Though he looked like a Mexican bandit, he was in fact Dr. Francisco Castillo Najera, soldier, surgeon, poet, linguist, bon vivant, art collector, idol of Geneva newshawks, statesman and diplomat. Inside the office he found President Roosevelt smilingly erect, heard the State Department's sleek Chief of Protocol James Clement ("Jimmy") Dunn intone: "The Mexican Ambassador."

Said the Ambassador as he presented his letter of credence: "I hope to bring closer the relations of friendship which unite our countries."

Replied the President: "I hope your stay in Washington will be a pleasant one . . . to promote interests common to both countries."

This diplomatic mummery disposed of, new Ambassador Castillo Najera spoke bluntly to newshawks outside. "There is," said he in excellent English, "a good deal of agitation going on. That agitation is outside Mexico, not in Mexico. Mexico is quite indifferent."

That U. S. agitation may cause Ambassador Castillo Najera serious embarrassment seemed, last week, improbable. Declaring Mexico's religious difficulties none of the U. S.'s business. President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull have put themselves on record as flatly opposed to U. S. intervention. So, too, has the National Council of the Episcopal Church.

Even less potentially troublesome are the Mexican Ambassador's other problems. Last month Mexico paid the first $500,000 of an agreed $7,000,000 to settle U. S. claims for life and property destroyed in the chaotic years 1910-20. Old Ambassador Josephus Daniels has solidly entrenched himself with Mexican officials by his seeming sympathy with their Six-Year Plan. Cautious and tentative have been Mexican moves against foreign capital (TIME, Feb. 25). Remembering the shady methods employed by some U. S. citizens in acquiring Mexican lands, the State Department is in no hurry to make trouble about the recent occupation by Mexicans of a few U. S.-owned ranches. There remain for Ambassador Castillo Najera the trifling matters of dividing the waters of the lower Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers, of keeping sewage out of the Tia Juana River, of settling the Chamizal boundary dispute at El Paso, Tex., of negotiating a trade treaty.

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