Solidarity Crosses Capricorn

Last week brought good and realistic news to all those advocates of hemisphere solidarity who fear that the phrase may remain only a phrase. Mistrust of U.S. intentions, plus mistrust of U.S. ability to take effective military action in the far south, had hitherto hampered U.S. efforts to get military cooperation from those countries which lie south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Last fortnight Argentina's Foreign Minister Emeritus, Carlos Saavedra Lamas, urged a conference of Foreign Ministers of the 21 American republics to agree on plans for common defense (TIME, June 16). Last week such a conference seemed hardly an immediate necessity, so well had diplomacy worked behind the scenes.

>Argentina's new Foreign Minister, Enrique Ruiz e Guinazue, was sworn in. On his way back to Buenos Aires from Europe, where he was a longtime delegate to the League of Nations and later Ambassador to the Vatican, Dr. Ruiz had stopped in Washington for talks with Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Under Secretary Sumner Welles. Hardly had he taken office than a report from Montevideo, across the broad mouth of the Rio de la Plata, indicated that the toughest defense problem between the U.S. and Argentina would be solved.

This was the problem of naval and air bases on the river, which the U.S. wants the right to use, but which Argentina wants left securely in South American hands. The Uruguayan Government was preparing a formula under which any American nation at war with a country outside the hemisphere would be classed as a nonbelligerent.

This ingenious scheme would nullify the provision of international law which limits the stay of belligerent warships in a neutral port to 24 hours. It would enable the U.S. to use Uruguayan ports and airfields as first-line refueling and supply bases. All that remained was for Dr. Ruiz and Uru guay's Foreign Minister Alberto Guani to agree on an equally ingenious formula to get new bases built with U.S. money without raising cries of Yanqui Imperialism.

> Paraguay's young Dictator-President-General Higinio Morinigo, who has often been rumored flirting with pro-German elements in Brazil, announced flatly that Paraguay would fulfill her obligations in hemisphere defense. The question of air bases was being studied, said he. Truth was that the U.S. had already selected two air bases in Paraguay, as well as eleven in Brazil, that a formula for U.S. assistance in the defense of both those countries had already been worked out.

> Argentina has invited military representatives of seven American nations, including the U.S., to attend the celebration of Independence Day in Buenos Aires July 9. Most likely representative from the U.S.: Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. If General Marshall goes, he and his entourage will fly the 7.300 miles in a fleet of military planes and put on the greatest display of military might South America has ever seen.

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