Swing to U. S.

Huge crowds jammed the docks in Montevideo harbor one morning last week, cheered loud & long as the sleek, grey U. S. S. Quincy steamed slowly up to the quay. No automobiles were permitted within two blocks of the wharf and heavy guards kept the crowds far from the cruiser's berth. But when sailors came ashore they were greeted with enthusiastic cries of "Viva Roosevelt!" "Viva los Estados Unidos!"

Coming on the heels of a Trojan-horse scare which swept over South America, the Quincy was hailed, a little extravagantly, as Washington's answer to the discovery of a Nazi plan for military occupation of Uruguay (TIME, June 24). That plan, a Uruguayan Congressional investigating committee asserted, had been calculated to convert "our nation into a country of peasants."

Ideal location for the proposed Nazi coup was this most pro-Allied, smallest of South American republics (size of North Dakota, population of Los Angeles). Bounded on the west by big Argentina and on the northeast by bigger Brazil, it provided an admirable base for espionage against its larger neighbors, consistent advisers on its foreign policy.

Thoroughly alarmed by the expose, hundreds of Uruguayans last week flocked to the colors as volunteers for military training and women's auxiliary service. At the same time, a Reich official in Montevideo threatened to break diplomatic relations if any of the 15 arrested Nazi leaders were deported, but promised, on the other hand, economic prosperity for Uruguay after the war if unfriendly agitation against Germany halted. By way of reply, the Uruguayan Senate hurriedly passed a law giving the Government power to censor press and radio and dissolving all foreign organizations.* A parliamentary committee proposed to ask the U. S. for an emergency trade treaty giving the U. S. control of Uruguayan exports & imports for the duration of the war.

President General Alfredo Baldomir accepted an invitation to President Roosevelt's proposed inter-American economic conference to try to see how far the hemisphere's abundance might be traded within the hemisphere (see p. 12). He went even further, suggested a Pan-American conference of ministers of war and chiefs of staff to study problems of mutual defense.

U. S. support was prompt and as officers of the Quincy gathered at the Jockey Club for a luncheon given in their honor by Foreign Minister Dr. Alberto Guani, American Minister to Uruguay Edwin C.

Wilson declared: "I am authorized to state that it is the intention and the avowed policy of my Government to cooperate fully, wherever such cooperation is desired, with all the other American Governments in crushing all activities that arise from non-American sources, and that imperil our political and economic freedom." Other Latin-American nations showed equally definite popular if not official leanings toward democracy:

> More than 1,000 torchlit Panamanians marched to the British and French Consulates in sympathy demonstrations, cheered and sang as emotion-choked French Vice Consul Pierre Mory thanked them, heard British Consul Lawrence Barnett express the British determination to continue the war.

> The Bolivian Ministry of Interior reasserted the freedom of the press in answer to Nazi demands for muzzling the anti-Fascist La Razon. "We will not tolerate the inexplicable Nazi attitude," La Razon shouted defiantly.

> In face of bans placed on demonstrations for or against any belligerents, a wild anti-Italian riot and shouts of "Long live France!" greeted Baron di Fontana Degli Angeli Gioacchino Scaduto Mendola, new Italian Minister to Ecuador, when he presented his credentials.

> In Santiago, Chileans thronged to join a newly formed "sixth column," organized to "awaken our democracy from the fatal sleep of misplaced confidence."

> The pro-Fascist elements of Brazilian President Getulio Dornelles Vargas' epochal speech, later disclaimed (TIME, June 24), were further minimized by Foreign Minister Dr. Oswaldo Aranha's cry of "America for the Americans." Still more soothing were the words in Washington of visiting Major Napoleao Alencastro Guimaraes, aide to the Brazilian Minister of Transport, who pictured Brazil as lining up solidly behind the U. S. and the Monroe Doctrine. While Major Alencastro Guimaraes negotiated for railroad materials, Brazil tightened its ties with the democracies by concluding a pact permitting Britain to buy from Brazil without transfer of currency. Militarily Brazil moved closer to the U. S. as General Pedro Aurelio Goes Monteiro, urging defensive cooperation of all the Americas, called on the U. S. to lend its material and technical superiority to the task.

> In Buenos Aires the British motorship Gascony floated quietly at her dock, prepared to sail for England with British volunteers and a cargo of canned meat.

Suddenly an explosion shook the vessel, one Argentine lay dead and five wounded as a result of an improvised time bomb concealed in a beef tin. An hour later pro-Nazi, Hitler-decorated Secretary of the Navy Leon Lorenzo Scasso expediently glossed over the affair: "A fire, source unknown." Threatened by a strong tendency toward native Fascism from within, alarmed by President Vargas' utterances as head of its most important rival for South American leadership, faced by a 30% decrease of European markets since the outbreak of the war (although trade with Britain is way up), Argentina too turned to the U. S. for help. French-educated Foreign Minister Jose M. Cantilo, always before an advocate of an Argentine-controlled South American bloc, declared that mutual understanding between Argentina and the U. S. was improving daily. More urgent was the cry that the U. S. must aid the South American "economic victims of the European War" or see them fall into economic systems of Old World totalitarianism.

Meanwhile Argentina went ahead on its own. Argentine Congressional committees studied a 1,000,000,000-peso (about $220,000,000) defense budget, increasing by 60% the sum asked only two days before and establishing a South American record.

President Roberto M. Ortiz tried to rush through Congress a Public Order Bill, designed against totalitarianism and so drastic that it may well dissolve all Argentine political parties, set up a total Government in Argentina.

* First to be convicted under this law was David Vanoni, editor of the Italian monthly La Scquilla. He was sentenced to 20 months' imprison ment by the Supreme Court for an article he printed in January criticizing Uruguay's action in connection with the scuttling of the Nazi pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee (TIME, Dec. 25).

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