Panic & Petulance

Although scarcely a shot was fired last week, Portugal's African "province" of Angola was in a state of panic. Fearful settlers from the back country streamed into Luanda with wives, children and household goods. They besieged airlines and shipping companies for passage home. Depositors stood in long lines outside Luanda banks, waiting to withdraw their money. In the northern region near the Congo, where some 200 settlers were massacred by black Angolan raiders last month, the Portuguese army issued submachine guns to the few settlers who chose to remain, and ordered them to spend their nights herded together at strong points.

Spies in the Consulates. The heavy hand of Dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar's political police, the P.I.D.E., reached into every corner of the province. Some 150 Angolans were arrested and thrown in jail as politically suspect. Most conspicuous prisoner was the Roman Catholic vicar general of Angola, Msgr. Manuel Mendes das Neves, 70, a distinguished mulatto churchman whose principal crime was his outspoken sermons advocating African rights. All foreign newsmen are kept under surveillance, their phone calls tapped, their cables censored. Even foreign consulates are watched. Said one diplomat: "There is not a single local employee on my payroll who I'm sure does not work for the police."

In Lisbon, the Salazar regime seemed determined to blame all its Angolan troubles on the U.S. The U.S.'s vote for a U.N. investigation of conditions in Angola was "the greatest political crime of the century," declared one government-controlled newspaper. In the tidy way things are done in Salazar's Portugal, anonymous pamphlets appeared in Lisbon's cafes and stores announcing a demonstration the next day at the U.S. embassy. When U.S. Ambassador C. Burke Elbrick requested protection,, the police advised him that they would be powerless to stop the demonstrators, sent only a token force of 30 men. The government TV network dispatched a full set of TV cameras and crews.

Ink on the Embassy. The mob, 20,000 strong, surged from downtown Lisbon up the broad, tree-lined Avenida da Liberdades, and hove to in front of the U.S. embassy right on schedule at 6:30 p.m., while there was still just enough light for the assembled cameras. Led on by loudspeaker trucks, the rioters screamed, "Down with America!" "Down with the U.N.!" and "Leave Angola to us!" They flaunted all manner of banners, which someone had conveniently supplied, demanding that the U.S. "Liberate Hungary First," "Get Out of Alaska," and "Remember Little Rock." Someone had also brought along rocks enough to smash 47 windows, ink enough to splash photogenically on the embassy's pink stucco fac,ade.

Most disturbing aspect of the demonstration was the frequently expressed demand that the U.S. "get out of the Azores," the mid-Atlantic Portuguese islands on which the U.S. Air Force maintains a vital stepping-stone base. Use of the base is governed by a bilateral agreement due to be renegotiated next year. What bothers some diplomats more is the possibility that Salazar, if pushed far enough, might yank Portugal out of NATO. But in the long run, Portugal is unlikely to desert the Western camp; Salazar needs the West as much as. or more than, the West needs him.

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