Army of Amateurs

On May 12, 1940, Argentina's Foreign Minister Jose Maria Cantilo, outraged by the German invasion of Western Europe two days before, called upon the Americas to abandon what he called "the dead conception" of neutrality for a realistic nonbelligerency. Last week, one year and 16 days later, Argentina's Acting President Ramon S. Castillo "reaffirmed" his country's neutrality. During the year the U.S. had abandoned the dead conception of neutrality for a realistic near-belligerency. Argentina declined to follow its own original advice.

If this was not a victory for the Nazis, it was surely no triumph for all the U.S. agencies which have spent a year and much U.S. time and money trying to persuade Latin America that loyalty is hemispheric.

When the U.S. public woke up to the fact that organized fifth columns were scattered throughout both the Americas, the U.S. already had four official agencies devoted to keeping the Americas one big family: the Pan American Union, the Department of State's Division of Cultural Relations, the Library of Congress' Hispanic Foundation, The Inter-Departmental Committee on Cooperation with the American Republics. Also interested were no less than 16 semi-official organizations such as the Committee on Cultural Relations with Latin America and the Council for Pan American Democracy, plus many smaller groups. These, however, did not seem to be enough. Into the breach sped an army of energetic amateurs who were soon brevetted with official status.

Quarterback of this team was 32-year-old Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, a good-looking Dartmouth grandson of John D. He and President Roosevelt had earnestly discussed Latin America first in 1939. Last year Nelson Rockefeller got some of his young friends to help him draft a memorandum to Franklin Roosevelt's Harry Hopkins proposing the creation of an independent agency to improve U.S.-Latin American relations. Last August Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order creating a branch of the Council of National Defense with the windy title of Office for Coordination of Commercial and Cultural Relations Between the American Republics. Nelson Rockefeller became Coordinator of C&CRBTAR.

For the first six or eight months of its existence Nelson Rockefeller's office was known around Washington chiefly for its sex appeal and the brash energy of its occupant. Visitors were decorously received by a brunette bombshell with a rippling voice, ushered into a blue-leather-decorated office by a blonde vision. There they found Mr. Rockefeller ready to listen to any scheme to promote good-neighborly relations. Outside the office Mr. Rockefeller astonished official Washington by his ability to pop in & out of a dozen committee meetings a day, to write innumerable memorandums, to argue lengthily with Congressmen, to send all over Latin America young men who astonished the natives with their apparent naivete. The State Department, which cherished the professional's distaste for the amateur and had not been consulted about the Committee's creation, developed toward it an attitude of chilly reserve.

By last week the reserve had noticeably thawed. The State Department, and the rest of Washington as well, observed that the Rockefeller Committee had not licked the Germans at a game they have been playing for a generation, nor made themselves at home in half a continent in twelve months. But it had accomplished a good deal, seemed on the way to accomplish more. Approved by Budget Director Harold Dewey Smith was an $8,000,000 appropriation to carry the Committee through fiscal 1942.

A for Effort. The U.S. controls some 30,000 route miles of airlines in South America. The Axis controls 20,000. Ready for Presidential announcement was the allocation of $8,000,000 of the President's emergency-defense money to establish an aviation bank which will buy out the Axis-controlled lines. This project was the brain child of a Rockefellerman, Yaleman and sportsman, William Barclay Harding, who got official attention by writing terse memorandums daily for months plugging his scheme. The aviation bank will be under Harding's boss, Cottonman Will Clayton, with most of the dickering in the hands of Sportsman Harding.

Also due for early announcement was creation of a specific priorities division for Latin America. For months Chairman Rockefeller has been after the President, harping on the need of letting Latin America have some of the materials and products it needs from the U.S. He has already sent a few planes south, has a promise of at least 30 more transport ships for Latin-American airlines.

Propagandawise the Rockefeller Committee has managed to eliminate a great deal of bad propaganda by publicizing the eight-year-old Roosevelt Good Neighbor policy. Head of the Committee's Communications Division is Don Francisco of Lord & Thomas (advertising agency), who made a whirlwind tour of Latin America to find out why the U.S. usually put its wrong foot forward. Working under Francisco is Yaleman John Hay ("Jock"') Whitney (motionpicture division) who has persuaded Hollywood producers to cut their films to rid them of sequences offensive to Latin Americans. Jock Whitney and Hollywood do not yet know about all the things that offend Latin Americans, but they hope to learn. They have also dispatched Hollywood glamor boys and girls south, to create Latin-American appreciation for North American faces and bodies just as the State Department is sending authors like Thornton Wilder to display the North American mind.

The radio committee under Merlin ("Deacon") Aylesworth has persuaded broadcasting companies to double their broadcasts to Latin America, helps to subsidize a short-wave sending station in Boston under the direction of onetime United Pressman Hobart C. Montee. Francis A. Jamieson's press division sends both spot news and boiler plate via the regular press services. It is distributing 100,000 booklets containing Spanish-and-Portuguese-translated excerpts from President Roosevelt's speeches. Title: Why America Arms.

D for Results. Not all Rockefeller projects have come to happy fruition. Worst boner was the launching of a $500,000 advertising campaign in Latin-American newspapers to persuade tourists to visit the U.S. The newspapers were carelessly chosen. Fat advertisements went to Axis-sympathizing papers while U.S. sympathizer like Buenos Aires' Critica and Rio de Janeiro's Vangnarda were neglected. Worst of all, in view of the high rate of dollar exchange, asking Latin Americans to tour the U.S. was a horrid joke.

Nelson Rockefeller's pet project, the elimination of Nazi agents from U.S. business concerns, backfired with annoying results. By last week several hundred agents had been fired by their employers. Many of them had promptly hopped off to the U.S.. sold their services to their former employers' competitors, returned to Latin America to steal business for their new firms.

The U.S. has some firm and fast friends in Latin America. Many of the most intelligent of these wish that the Rockefeller Committee would spend some of its money to encourage organizations in the Latin-American countries to do some of the work the Committee is trying to do alone. The Cultural Relations section, under onetime Minister to Portugal and Bolivia Robert Granville Caldwell has obtained U.S. scholarships for Latin-American doctors, planned an Inter-American Academy of Sciences and a Cultural Institute, sent out a traveling exhibition of paintings, etc. It has done nothing yet to combat German textbooks, written by German educators but wisely translated and sponsored by eminent Spaniards.

Both Your Houses. For the last four weeks Nazi propaganda directed against the U.S. had appeared in increasing quantities in Argentine newspapers, on the radio, in the mail, through books and cartoons. The propaganda is an artful blending of subtle innuendo in high places and blatant, vicious attack in low places.

U.S. seizure of Axis ships was "hasty and illegal," whereas Argentina is following a "fair" policy in buying Axis ships. The U.S. is blamed for difficulties in shipping 200,000 tons of wheat to Spain. Actually there was a shortage of ships. The film Argentine Nights, which was whistled off the screen in Buenos Aires, was an "insult to Argentine sensibilities." Actually the demonstration was carefully staged. Key to the whole campaign is the argument that the ABC countries should unite in a bloc, excluding the U.S. and the rest of Latin America. The Rockefeller Committee is not responsible for major U.S. diplomacy in Latin America. That tortuous and gigantic task belongs to the U.S. State Department. The Rockefeller Committee's job is to harmonize inter-American cultural and commercial relations and is chiefly one of propaganda--put a case in its best possible light.

Since U.S. propaganda is aimed at promoting friendship and tranquillity, while Axis propaganda seeks to spread hate and dissension. Nelson Rockefeller and his well-meaning and hard-working young men are at an immediate disadvantage. Whether in the long run the Nazi propaganda will backfire and U.S. propaganda produce sound results, no one could say last week. Most likely result was that Argentina. Brazil and Chile would soon sicken of all propaganda. Some two months ago good-natured Foreign Minister Oswaldo Aranha of Brazil quipped to a U.S. visitor: "The next good-will mission that arrives in Rio, Brazil will declare war on the United States."

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