Lethargic Apprehension?

"Prepare yourself for the worst," warned Rio's O Globo the evening Brazil heard about the new war in Korea. In Santiago, the dollar sagged from 109 to 81 pesos in brisk free-market trading. Crowds gathered quickly to read news bulletins in Mexico City's Bucareli Street, radio stations increased their newscasts. "The measures which the great nations now take," said Bogota's El Tiempo, "will affect all of us. We enter into a grave period."

At week's end, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Edward G. Miller arranged a half-hour meeting in Washington at which 20 Latin American ambassadors were briefed on the Korean crisis by Dean Rusk, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. But by then the Latin American mood seemed to have leveled off into a kind of lethargic apprehension. A cross-country auto race commanded bigger headlines in Argentina than President Truman's statement on the use of the atom bomb (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Brazilians went back to their futebol games. Korea still seemed very far away. There was no reason to doubt that in any crisis Latin America would be behind the U.S. But the latinos still had to learn what the U.S. would do in Asia before they could take any action on their own.

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