Monsignor Will Not Speak

Notices had gone out that stocky, greying Monsignor Miguel de Andrea, Argentina's popular Bishop of Temnos, would open the meeting of the National Academy of Moral Sciences and Politics in Buenos Aires' plush Teatro Colon. Then everyone remembered that Monsignor Andrea was a liberal; in his youth he had even led a fisherman's strike. Like a pampas fire, word spread that the Bishop would discourse on liberty and the people's right to elect their own authorities.

The Teatro Colon's ticket office was swamped. Rumor galloped across the capital, cantered into the chambers of President Pedro Ramirez's reactionary nationalist Cabinet. Promptly the Government canceled the Academy's meeting. People on the street nodded knowingly, as if to say, "They feared to let him speak." Suddenly on the newsstands appeared red-&-black booklets containing the Bishop's unspoken address. Crowds snapped them up.

Monsignor Andrea's words were calm, dignified, nonrevolutionary. But they ranged a distinguished churchman with students, professors, workers and other civilians in a mounting popular protest against a mounting rightist dictatorship. "To dominate slaves," exhorted the Bishop, "is doubly ignoble; to reign over the free is doubly glorious! Your Excellency, Senor Presidente: let your authority be the guaranty of our liberty!"

Internal. The Andrea story seeped through a harsh wall of censorship. It reflected hard facts that the Ramirez Government could not hide.

Politically, Argentina was in turmoil. New internal lines were forming. On the one side: the extreme nationalists, weak in numbers, strong in Army and police support, controlling the Government, determined to push an antiSemitic, antilabor, anti-liberal domestic program. On the opposing side: practically all other Argentines, including disgruntled Navy and Army officers; wealthy landowners and industrialists who dislike the Ramirez Government's rent and price controls; labor unions, whose leaders have been arrested wholesale; students and liberals, who are alarmed over the suppression of civil rights.

The turmoil did not necessarily mean revolution, though anything could happen. Argentines speculated that General Ramirez might give way as President to such extremist colleagues as Colonel Juan Peron, handsome, astute, ruthless Under Secretary of War and head of the Government's Labor Department; or to General Edelmiro Farrell, Irish-faced, hard-boiled Vice President.

The discontent arrayed against the nationalists is as yet cross-purposed, unorganized, lacking in effective leadership. Another advantage for the Government: neutral Argentina is riding a wave of prosperity; with beef, wheat and leather selling fast to combatants abroad, with home industries expanding, popular unrest has no immediate economic roots.

Domestic crisis has forced into the background the nettlesome question of foreign policy. But the outcome of Argentina's domestic struggle would certainly affect her relations abroad. Until the extreme nationalists were overthrown or compelled to back down, she would cling to neutrality, continued relations with Germany, and hemispheric isolation.

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