Outpoppings

The first real outpopping of honest, controversial opinion, at the Sixth Pan-American Conference, came last week, in Havana, as the delegates were about to adjourn their stale and stuffy sittings.

P: Rotund and glossy Argentine Delegate Honorio Pueyrredon was first to potently outpop. His vastly rich and extensively land owning family enable him to flout whom he will with impunity. At the first session of the Assembly of the League of Nations, in Geneva, he arose and stalked out when Argentine interests seemed threatened. He stands high in the ranks of the strong, opposition, "Radical" party of Argentina. He has maintained himself as Ambassador at Washington by sheer prestige and almost in despite of Argentine President Marcelo de Alvear.

Since the opening of the present Conference, Seiior Pueyrredon has unalterably insisted it should make some definite pronouncement against high tariff barriers--that is to say, against high U. S. tariffs. By hard, driving diplomacy he got such a pronouncement tentatively recognized for insertion into the preamble of a stuffed-shirt treaty draft reorganizing the Pan-American Union.-Last week U. S. pressure resulted in the striking out of Pueyr-redon's preamble clause. From Buenos Aires came, allegedly, instructions that he should knuckle under and sign the treaty draft.

Seiior Pueyrredon's action was a Rooseveltian gesture. At one stroke he resigned as head of the Argentine Delegation and as Ambassador to Washington.

Soon in Buenos Aires, Foreign Minister

Dr. Angel Gallardo expressed his "amazement," and President de Alvear openly flayed Senor Pueyrredon for "such conduct." Both knew that with an Argentine presidential election scheduled for this spring, Senor Pueyrredon had made the grandest of grandstand plays to convince the electorate that he alone is of sufficiently tough presidential timber to stand up for Argentina, even against the U. S. With Outpopper Pueyrredon thus self-eliminated, the treaty reorganizing the Pan-American Union was submitted in innocuous form to the plenary session of the Conference.

P:Three resolutions condemning various phases of immigration restriction were adopted by the Conference in plenary session, last week. After each was read out, a U. S. Delegate, Henry Prather Fletcher, able U. S. Ambassador to Italy, rose and announced that the U. S. reserves to itself the right of determining its own "purely domestic" immigration policy without reference to any international authority whatever.

P:Final and titanic outpopping occurred on the eve of adjournment, last week, when Foreign Minister of Salvador Dr. Don Jose Gustavo Guerrero broke an agreement arrived at in committee not to present to the plenary session a resolution condemning intervention--such as that of the U. S. in Nicaragua.

When the delegates had assembled for a routine plenary session, Dr. Guerrero suddenly leaped to his feet and moved a resolution as follows: "Resolved: That no state shall intervene in the internal affairs of another."

So unexpected was this move that the galleries, packed with Latin spectators, first gasped, then cheered. Hubbub and furious cross-comments ensued among the delegates. Then Chief U. S. Delegate Charles Evans Hughes rose, visibly bristling with wrath. A gentleman's agreement, arrived at in committee, had been broken! Mr. Hughes is a gentleman. Said he, in measured tones, tinged with vehemence:

"I yield to none in the establishment of the ideal of sovereignty and independence for each one of the republics, from the greatest to the smallest. . . .

"We do not wish the territory of any American republic. We do not wish to govern any American republic. We simply wish peace and order and stability and recognition of earnest rights properly acquired. . . .

"What are we to do when a Government breaks down? Are we to see our American citizens butchered? I am not speaking of sporadic disorders but of cases in which the Government itself is unable to function. It is a principle of international law that under such circumstances another Government has the right, I will not say to intervene, but to interpose in a temporary manner to protect the lives and interests of its nationals. . . .

"I cannot sacrifice the rights of my country. I will join with you in declaring international law, I will join with you in writing international law, but it must be the law of justice that has come down to us, the law of nations by which we find ourselves bound--justice man to man, justice nation to nation."

A moment later Dr. Guerrero, cowed trifler with gentlemen's agreements, rose and in a scarcely audible voice withdrew his resolution.

P:So almost non-existent were the accomplishments of the Conference that Mr. Hughes pointed out as its greatest specific achievement the recommendation, adopted last week, that a Pan-American Arbitration Conference shall meet in Washington within a year. This will be the scene of Olympic games dedicated to the drawing up of a convention to "adopt obligatory arbitration . . . with the minimum exceptions." Exaggerating as only a great statesman can, Mr. Hughes described the promulgation of this recommendation as marking "the happiest day of my life."

* The Secretariat of the Pan-American Conference.