Argentine Danzig?

To understand Argentina, the U.S. need only remember its own psychology before Pearl Harbor.

So advised Argentina's Novelist-Critic Max Dickmann last week after four months spent in the U.S. at the invitation of the State Department. Novelist Dickmann, 41, had earned the right to advise. Noted for his novels of Argentine life, he has long been a translator of American books, long a student of U.S. mores.

Biggest stumbling block in the path of good neighborliness, he said, is the long "misunderstanding" between the U.S. and Argentina. "All you know of us," he says, "is what, you read in the newspapers. . . . All we know about you is what we learn from those big businessmen who live and grow wealthy in Argentina for 30 years without ever learning the language. Or we see your terrible movies--sex, loose women, jazz, gangsters, stupid slapstick comedy. How can you understand us, or we understand you, without effort?"

Max Dickmann sternly disapproves his country's present foreign policy. He wishes Argentina would take her place alongside the United Nations. But he insisted that Argentines are nearly 100% pro-Ally. If they do not choose to fight it is for three reasons: "A wrong conception of international politics, a pacific viewpoint engendered by 82 years of peace, a spreading of propaganda by Argentine isolationists that the U.S. is taking advantage of World War II to make a colony of South America." Said he:

"Argentines are basically democratic. But they do not see this war as one of idealism--of Fascist totalitarianism v. the democratic way of life--but as a war of great interests. They see it in terms of Great Britain defending her empire against the challenge of a new German imperialism, of the U.S. seeking to throttle an expanding Japan. Argentines ask why should they go to war to protect England's empire. Altogether, our attitude is very much like that of the U.S. before Pearl Harbor."

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