Good Neighborhood

After three good weeks of work and parties in beauteous Buenos Aires, the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace (TIME, Dec. 7 et seq.) ended with 69 projects approved and this able summing up by a Brazilian delegate: "The United States at last has joined the Pan-American family! Now we can do something and we are going to do it. Watch for even more surprising results at subsequent Inter-American and Pan-American conferences. This is just a beginning!"

No admirer of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, at whose initiative last winter the Conference was proposed, is the arch-Republican New York Herald Tribune, but its Leland Stowe cabled from Buenos Aires last week a tribute in the best tradition of impartial U. S. journalism: "It is agreed that the prestige of the United States has never been so high among its 20 sister American republics as at present, and the goodwill dividends of [the President's] Good Neighbor policy should be a great asset in the next few years, especially if Europe goes to the brink of war."

Mr. Roosevelt made the 12,000-mi. Buenos Aires round trip in unaccustomed and unexpected obscurity on the inside pages of even the most earnest U. S. dailies while their most prominent news columns and largest headlines went to the Woman of the Year (see col. 3). The President was more than ever the Man of the Year of the Americas, and his happy appearance on the Buenos Aires scene was enough to reap millions of responsive Latin smiles. After he sailed home, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, by his courtly modesty and winning character, achieved more than the State Department had expected or hoped, skillfully assisted by its Spanish-speaking Sumner Welles, among diplomats an ace professional. This week the Conference had to its credit not only several positive achievements at Buenos Aires but several negatives of an especially vital nature.

In the Italo-Ethiopian crisis of last winter, it would have been beneficial to have known beforehand that "Sanctions" as the League of Nations chose to apply them were going to be worse than useless. If it had been further known that the British were secretly playing tit-tat-toe with Italy and France behind Geneva's back (TIME, Oct. 14, 1935, et seq.}, the League states would never have voted Sanctions. In lost trade, Sanctions must have cost at least $275,000,000--a particularly dead loss. Last week, when the Inter-American Peace Conference rose, it had been definitely ascertained that Argentina will NOT be a party to that clause of a neutrality treaty adopted by the other American states which would operate, in case of a European war, to prevent her from selling her beef, horses, sheep and foodstuffs to the belligerents. Since Argentina is going to sell, all American countries are very likely to do the same, and this week premiers, presidents and dictators may smoke that in their peace pipes.

Another important negative at Buenos Aires was the omission of the U. S. last week to join in otherwise unanimous approval by the Americas of linking up the principal American and other peace treaties (such as the Kellogg-Briand Pact) with the League of Nations. Chilean Delegate Felix Nieto Del Rio put Messrs. Hull & Welles on a spot by declaring the U. S. had "abstained." They got off by insisting the U. S. had "withheld." In any case the U. S. is not having any League of Nations in its Good Neighborhood this week, and Geneva can smoke that.

The third and greatest negative established at Buenos Aires is that European statesmen are now joined by American statesmen in unanimous failure to discover any definition of what constitutes "aggression." Abortive also were attempts to solve the Chaco boundary dispute between Bolivia & Paraguay. All Christmas Day and right up to the time Secretary of State Hull's steamer sailed for New York, the would-be peacemakers were still haggling. They broke off to bid him goodby.

Besides these negatives, the Conference achieved 69 more or less positive agree ments, the less nebulous and more important being:

1) Secretary Hull persuaded all 21 American countries to sign a treaty for immediate consultation among all in case of war anywhere in the world; 2) He secured similar unanimous adoption of a declaration of Inter-American solidarity, making the Monroe Doctrine no longer one-sided but 21-sided; 3) The three-year-old Anti-Intervention protocol, under which intervention by an American state in the affairs of another is "inadmissable," was rousingly reaffirmed.

Along with these positive achievements, the Conference gave to many admirable balls pushes and pats to set them rolling. For example, when Haiti proposed that "A Circle of American Friendship" be established, the Conference told Panama to establish it. If Panama has the gumption, Panama can spend years making arrangements for "eminent Americans" of all 21 countries to meet in Panama from time to time to be friendly.

Besieged the whole three weeks by U. S. businessmen of the Argentine was Secretary of State Hull. They begged and pleaded with him, since he was actually in Buenos Aires, to negotiate there with Argentine Foreign Minister Carlos Saavedra Lamas and try to clear up the many vexatious Argentine-U. S. quarrels over tariffs, hoof & mouth quarantine, and exchange restrictions which now so hamstring the two countries' mutual trade.

Hamstrung himself by his President's policy, Free-Trader Hull resolutely explained that the U. S. delegation had left Washington "unprepared" to negotiate on this question and was going to go back to Washington without touching it, much as his heart always bleeds in the cause of Free Trade.

The Secretary of State's entourage, as the Conference drew to a close, defended him from the local U. S. businessmen by putting him to bed "with a slight cold." They warmly said that for a man of his years he had done quite enough, and done it very well. At the final Conference windup, Orator Hull was too hoarse to read his speech and that was done by Mr. Velles: "Peace . . . clear vision. . . . Let us return to our particular problems and duties pledging that we will, individually and collectively, reject the counsels of force. Let us hold out to a darkened world the beacon of a just and permanent peace which we pledge ourselves to maintain on this American Continent. May the spirit and the example which we have consecrated here be of avail throughout the world."

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