A New Hand

When Dean Acheson took over as Secretary of State, latinos looked for a new pitch to U.S.-Latin American policy. For the past two years, cautious Careerman Paul Daniels, director of the State Department's Office of American Republic Affairs, had been left pretty well alone with the responsibility. His policy had been a policy of drift.

President Truman's Point Four program had already suggested that a change was at hand. More recently, Washington's warm welcome to Brazil's President Eurico Caspar Dutra pointed up U.S. determination to stand beside its democratic friends. Last week fresh evidence that the U.S. was pulling up its hemispheric socks came with the nomination of an Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs. He was balding, 37-year-old Edward G. Miller Jr., Yaleman ('33), Wall Street lawyer and one of Dean Acheson's closest wartime lieutenants at the State Department.

Miller, who specialized in congressional relations and economic conferences on his first tour at State, was born in Puerto Rico, learned Spanish as a boy in Cuba. He picked up fair Portuguese during wartime years as the Rio embassy's expert on seized Axis property. Miller's views on Latin American affairs may be expected to agree closely with those of Secretary Acheson, whom he calls "the one hero I've had in my life."

"You can't condone the horrible conditions under some of the [Latin American] military regimes," says Miller, "but you can't withdraw your ambassador, either. On the other hand, in a positive way you can show your solidarity with a country like Chile, which has a stable and democratic regime that should be encouraged. You can do a lot with the right approach."

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