Brick Eater

Finally the whole business was settled in secret meeting by the leaders of the two parties. The deal was that the new Congress would meet this week and confirm Dr. Enrique Hertzog, 49, as successor to the late, lynched Dictator-President Gualberto Villarroel. Hertzog had beat Luis Fernando Guachalla by only 289 votes in the January elections. In return for the settlement made with Guachalla and followers all challenged Guachalla congressmen were to be seated, thus assuring the Guachallistas of at least a fair chance of controlling the new Parliament. Hertzog promised to invite his friend and rival to join his Government and help him deal with such pressing matters as a new tin miners' strike, an Argentine proposal for a trade treaty like the one Peron made with Chile (TIME, Dec. 23) and a flood in tropical Beni province (where alligators had chased the flood victims into the tree tops).

Fighting Surgeon. Tough, nervous, French-descended Hertzog served as a regimental surgeon on front-line duty in the Chaco war.' During his political career he has been jailed seven times, exiled six. Once, he was horsewhipped, burned, bayonetted and thrown bleeding on his cell floor. But when other prisoners marched by, he rose, put on his coat and stuck a flower in his buttonhole to show them he was still all right. He collects colonial paintings, admires Harold Laski, and says he is so healthy he can "eat bricks fried in automobile oil."

Hertzog will have more than alligators to worry about. The night after the peace meeting, Guachalla and Hertzog followers rioted in front of the Congress building. One Hertzog man fell and his fellows, thinking him dead, paraded through the streets with the body to cry shame upon the Guachallistas. Later they found the victim was only wounded. He died late that night in the emergency hospital.

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