Labor Draft

Last week the No. 1 British trade union ist, Minister of Labor Ernest ("Big Ernie") Bevin, ordered all British males aged 41 or 42 and not already actively defending their country to register on April 5 for labor service (others up to 45 will register later). On April 19 British females aged 20 (girls of 21 will also follow) must do the same. To speed up the process of getting more people to work in munitions factories, shipyards, mines and upon repair of bombed areas, Laborite Bevin urged that 100,000 young women volunteer at once.

Next day ten women volunteered in London, 189 in Newcastle. A Women's Consultative Committee, appointed by Big Ernie in the expectation that they would throw feminine weight benind his labor draft, pounced on the Labor Minister instead. They said he was using the wrong method, should have appealed to women emotionally instead of giving them orders and regulations. To reporters, hulking Ernest Bevin said in sonorous nasals: "It don't do anybody any 'arm to work a little."

Although the Government had said it would grant exemptions to women with American diplomats sat listening in the gallery. It was the strongest, straightest expression of Hemisphere solidarity to come from Latin America since the Havana Conference. Said Dr. Padilla: "It is the destiny of America to fight, and the Mexican people are determined to share this destiny. We must therefore prepare to cooperate ardently, not in aggression but in defense of this hemisphere, to preserve it as the example and hope of world fraternity and justice."

With these words, endorsed by a vote of approval in Mexico's Congress, the new administration of President Manuel Avila Camacho made it clear that the long-awaited mutual-defense pact between Mexico and the U. S. will soon be concluded. In spite of some opposition from the press and public, last week even the left-wing Mexican Federation of Labor (CTM) approved the administration's program of continental defense.

Day before the student outbreak was the time for riots, if there were to be any. That day was the third anniversary of Mexico's expropriation of foreign-owned oil properties, celebrated in Mexico as a national holiday. Usually an excuse for demonstrations against Yankee imperialism, the day passed without serious incident this year. Workers paraded in the great square outside the National Palace, while inscrutable President Manuel Avila Camacho stood on the balcony with a guard of honor, waving his hand, smiling with the slightly grim air of a man who wanted no more nonsense.

One good reason for discouraging troublemakers was that the President's older brother and chief supporter, General Maximino Avila Camacho, was on his way to Washington. Stocky, steel-hard General Maximino Avila Camacho holds no official post in Mexico. Onetime Governor of his native State of Puebla, he is now a gentle man of leisure. But he traveled last week with a semi-royal retinue of 14 people that included, besides his wife and children, a Senator, a translator from the Foreign Office, a newspaperman to handle publicity, a retired bullfighter.

Official reason for Maximino's trip is to return Vice President Henry Agard Wallace's visit to Mexico last autumn for Brother Manuel's inauguration. But most Mexicans took it for granted that he would have something more important to do. It was Maximino who last year, when Manuel was running for President, rallied Mexico's biggest Army chiefs around him, persuaded most of Mexico's State Governors to back him. A devout Catholic, devoted to his family, like most Mexicans Maximino is the stern protector of his younger brothers. If Manuel was ready last week to make a deal with the U. S., Maximino was well qualified to arrange it for him.

Chief obstacle to a U. S.-Mexican defense pact is the question, still unsettled, of compensation to U. S. oilmen for the petroleum lands which Mexico expropriated. That obstacle seemed to be melting rapidly when last week the Mexican Chamber of Deputies met and quietly amended the oil code to let foreign capital share in the development of national resources. Under this amendment it would be possible to repay U. S. and British oilmen in part by restoring to them a limited interest in the properties they once owned.

In Nassau, where he paused on his way to the U. S., Maximino Avila Camacho called on the Duke of Windsor, had cocktails with the Duchess. Wiseacres said he was doing another little chore for Brother Manuel--paving the way for resumption of diplomatic relations between Britain and Mexico, broken off in 1938 over the same pesky question of oil expropriation.

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