Viva Braden!

As the midnight train from Rosario rolled into Buenos Aires, U.S. Ambassador Spruille Braden wondered what kind of reception he would get at the station. In his pocket were reports of the Government-inspired, anti-U.S. campaign which had pictured him as a "Yankee pig," a tough U.S. cowboy trying to run Argentina. In a Buenos Aires theater, a nationalist audience had screamed: "Death to Braden!"

On the station platform stood some 3,000 Argentines. As Ambassador Braden stepped off the train, they waved U.S. flags, shouted: "Viva Braden, viva U.S., viva liberty, democracy, elections!" Then the crowd swept up the hefty Ambassador, wafted his 300 Ibs. to a waiting Embassy car. Not until Braden had sped away, did the Buenos Aires police step in with their nightsticks, start cracking demonstrators' heads.

Later, Ambassador Braden made a serious charge: "The recent campaign against myself and my country must have been instigated by foreign and Nazi elements. . . ." In a signed manifesto, 600 leading Argentines branded the anti-Braden campaign as an effort to "sow discord, mistrust . . . and hatred" in a Hitlerian fashion. Newspaper correspondents were even more forthright: they declared that Vice President Juan Domingo PerOn had started the attack on Braden.

PerOn for President. In Buenos Aires' Parque Retiro, there was a different kind of demonstration. PerOn henchmen had invited 2,000 guests to a dinner to inaugurate a rump Radical (centrist) Party, announce Juan PerOn's bid for the Presidency. There were shouts of "Viva PerOn," "The nation is with PerOn."

After the rally leaders organized a spontaneous march of 600 enthusiasts to PerOn's swank residence. From a balcony PerOn explained: Argentina had fought 20 years for political freedom; he would fight another 20 years for economic freedom.

In other Latin American capitals, officials talked of reopening the Argentine question at the Inter-American Conference in Rio de Janeiro next October. In Washington, it was rumored that Secretary of State James Francis Byrnes would withdraw Ambassador Braden from Buenos Aires as a slap at the Argentine militarists, make him Undersecretary of State. From Washington, too, came a report that the U.S. has already ordered its first economic sanction against Argentina: in the future, Argentine ships may not use the Panama Canal. Reason: their two vessels a month overtax the Canal.

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