The General Takes Off

Argentina's cold, determined President Ramon S. Castillo was having a somber time imposing a neutrality that the great mass of his people did not want:

> The Argentine Chamber of Deputies voted last week, 66-to-22, to ask Minister of Interior Miguel Culaciati to explain why he had not suppressed "the activities of the German National Socialist Party, which continues to function in Argentina under the name of the Federation of German Welfare and Cultural Clubs."

> Onetime President General Augustin P. Justo's offer to serve in the Brazilian Army, which promptly made him an honorary brigadier general (TIME, Sept. 7), was wildly popular among the Argentines. It embarrassed President Castillo as Teddy Roosevelt once embarrassed neutral Woodrow Wilson by proposing to fight for Belgium. This week General Justo flew to Rio in the private plane of Brazil's President Getulio Vargas as guest of honor for the Brazilian national holiday. At Santos Dumont Airfield he got a roaring welcome from 30,000 Brazilians. All this raised General Justo's chances of succeeding President Castillo in 1943. President Castillo was particularly galled because last July he himself had said: "War-minded people are fully free to go to actual war fronts, where they can fight against real enemies of democracy instead of futilely making trouble here."

> The Castillo Government, which has never concealed its sympathy with Spain's hotly pro-Axis Falange, was highly embarrassed when Spain's Dictator Francisco Franco ousted Ramon Serrano Suner, head of the Falangists, from the Spanish Government (see p. 24). This lessened the propaganda value of Argentina's new trade treaty with Spain, signed last week.

President Castillo last week received 14 albums said to contain a million Argentine signatures approving his policy. He himself reaffirmed it. But he was plainly worried about its effect both at home and among his South American neighbors. He had arranged various policy-defending junkets. His Minister of War, General Juan N. Tonazzi, had gone to Paraguay. A military mission headed by Inspector General Martin Gras was about to leave for Peru. President Castillo, himself this week planned to meet Bolivia's President General Enrique Penaranda at the Bolivian border. But it was the Brazilian junket of General Justo, who wanted to fight the Axis, which was most likely to impress Argentina and South America.

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