Delhi Dallying

Last month India's Chief Justice Sir Maurice Linford Gwyer declared invalid the emergency statute under which Mohandas K. Gandhi and 8,000 lesser All-India Congress leaders had been detained since last August. The Raj was unruffled. Technically the Viceroy accepted the judgment, but he refused to release edition of the newspaper Critica was suppressed for carrying an attack on Castillo and an appeal for speed in realizing hemisphere cooperation.

No Revolution. The suppression was typical of the principal contradiction besetting Argentina's new Government. Outwardly a revolution has occurred and a new foreign policy is in the making. Inwardly there is fear that a revolution may yet start. Nicolas Repetto, leader of Argentina's Socialist Party, now touring the U.S., put it this way: "We should wait until the group of victorious military leaders calls for free elections and give the country a constitutional president elected by the people."

Few Argentines expected that Ramirez & Co. would call an early election. Most believed, with Repetto, that a free election would upset the generals' power.

Wiry "Palito" (Little Stick) Ramirez was born 59 years ago in meat-packing La Paz in Entre Rios Province. He was grandson of a farmer, son of the chief of police. There he played and fought with Saba and Benito Sueyro, today the Vice President and Minister of Marine respectively. Later, in military school in Buenos Aires, a close friend was Arturo Rawson, the two-day President. As a young lieutenant, Palito was sent to learn with Kaiser Wilhelm's 5th Hussars. Well trained, Lieut. Ramirez returned home, devoted himself to rising via captain and colonel to general and Minister of War. In 1930 he made a name for himself in the last generals' revolt, that of Jose Uriburu, who ousted, unconstitutionally, President Hipolito Irigoyen. As a reward, he became military attache in Rome.

With his motherly auburn-haired wife, three daughters and son, the new President lives in a somber grey apartment house, entertains freely, jokes continually, sneaks candy whenever he can get it, wishes there were more time to tinker with mechanical gadgets.

Last week along the Avenida de Mayo, Corrientes and the Diagonal Norte, comfortably overcoated crowds pushed toward late and heavy dinners, late and lusty shows. At La Cabana patrons sampled luscious baby beef, brought sizzling on little grills to their tables. Other restaurants featured other delicacies. Business was good; the best people were satisfied with the direction things were taking. If others in Argentina disagreed, they had no effective way of saying so.

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