Spoiled Neighbor

The U. S. has always reserved the sole right to spank its Latin-American neighbors. Since 1933 the U. S., anxious to avoid the stigma of dollar diplomacy, has spared the rod in the interests of President Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor" policy. Meanwhile, the Mexican Government has seized without compensation oil lands, mines, ranches and farms belonging to citizens of the U. S. and foreign countries.

After President Lazaro Cardenas seized great foreign oil properties this year, President Roosevelt explained for Mexico's benefit that the Good Neighbor policy "can never be merely unilateral. ... It is bilateral and multilateral and . . . the fair dealing which it implies must be reciprocated." But still, President Crdenas did nothing about paying for what he had grabbed. England got so huffy about the a treatment of her nationals that she broke off diplomatic relations with Mexico.

Recent expropriations have forced Secretary of State Cordell Hull to face the question of whether the U. S. could continue to spare the rod without spoiling the neighbor. He decided on a verbal spanking, denied that it must be forcible.

Franklin Roosevelt had no sooner finished fishing in Mexico's Pacific backyard last week than Secretary Hull sent Mexico a note about expropriation-without-compensation. The document was remarkable not only for force and color unusual in the State papers of Cordell Hull,* but because it was really many notes in one-- carbon copies to all Latin-American neighbors and a copy to the U. S. electorate.

Not once in 1,400 well-chosen words, addressed to the Mexican Ambassador, Dr. Don Francisco Castillo Najera, did Secretary Hull so much as mention oil wells, gold mines or vast ranches. Experts of the State Department had supplied figures on Mexican expropriations of small farm holdings as far back as 1915. But before he mentioned even these, Secretary Hull went into a juicy preamble about the sympathy of aims existing between President Cardenas' new deal for Mexico and President Roosevelt's New Deal for the U. S.: "The issue is not whether Mexico should pursue social and economic policies designed to improve the standard of living of its people. The issue is whether, in pursuing them, the property of American nationals may be taken by the Mexican Government without making prompt payment of just compensation to the owners in accordance with the universally recognized rules of law and equity."

The U. S., said Mr. Hull, had also expropriated properties from foreigners as well as its own citizens, but "in each & every case . . . has reimbursed promptly and in cash the owners. . . ."

From 1915 to 1927, declared Mr. Hull, Mexico seized 161 "moderate sized" properties of U. S. citizens. "Not a single claim has been adjusted and none has been paid."

Since 1927 additional properties, "chiefly farms of a moderate size," with a total claimed value of $10,132,388, have been taken by Mexico. "This figure does not include the large land grants frequently mentioned in the press." None of these seizures has yet been paid for. "Certainly on the basis of the record above stated, the United States Government cannot be accused of being unreasonable or impatient."

Declared Secretary Hull: "The taking of property without compensation is not expropriation. It is confiscation. It is no less confiscation because there may be an expressed intent to pay at some time in the future."

Therefore Mr. Hull requested that Mexico arbitrate (under the multilateral Pan-American arbitration treaty of 1929): 1) the question whether it has complied with international law ("It is the considered judgment, however, of the United States that the Government of Mexico has not complied"); 2) the amounts and terms by which Mexico will make good. In short, for Washington no more "manana."

*Under-Secretary Sumner Welles wrote it.

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