No Big Brother

AMERICAS No Big Brother

With bad taste and good propaganda, an uninvited guest crashed Panama City last week where a party for representatives of the 21 American countries was gathering. The party folks were all Americans, all Lima conferees, all concerned with keeping the American hemisphere out of war. The crasher was a belligerent, a German, an official--Dr. Otto Reinebeck, German minister accredited to all Central American countries--and he brought with him a staff of assistants whose names and number were a guarded secret. Throughout South America, German propaganda agencies simultaneously charged that the parley was merely a device by which the U. S. would make all the southern republics its protectorates.

As the delegates gathered, as Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles (sent in lieu of his chief, Cordell Hull, so that the smaller countries would not feel dominated) began issuing statements, as President Juan Demosthenes Arosemena of Panama polished up a speech of welcome, the U. S. got busy backstage. Casually, as if its perfect timing were just a happy coincidence, the New York World's Fair put on a Pan American Day, at which, by chance, Cordell Hull was scheduled to speak. In the Fair's Court of Peace, Secretary of State Hull gave a quiet, drawling speech in favor of justice, fair dealing, mutual respect, cooperation, solidarity. A better showman was New York's Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, colorful Latin and good American, who called Pan America "a democracy of democracies," said it had no "big brother" and would accept "no ersatz for God Almighty."

Next day President Arosemena spoke. By inference he took many a slap at the uninvited guest as he addressed the invited ones: "Gentlemen . . . you come here neither to destroy nor to enslave nor to dismember nations, nor to prepare the predominion of one people upon the tragic ruins of a neighbor, nor to subscribe to public pacts to cover the maliciousness of secret treaties, nor to proscribe races, nor to persecute religions." So roundly did he condemn totalitarianism that he had to explain that Latin American dictatorships "have never been imperialist or totalitarian." Most of them, he said, were merely patriarchies to educate childlike peoples in the direction of democracy.

But what was this high-sounding talk to lead to? Just vague expressions of good will, a meaningless passing of the peace pipe? The conference was not 48 hours old before it became specific as well as pacific.

Sumner Welles, outlining the agenda, dropped one exceedingly important hint. The U. S. might be on its way to some big-time developing in Latin America. In order to assure economic cooperation, he said, the U. S. would tender its neighbor loans, short term for "current matters," long term for "purchase of rail and mill equipment, heavy goods, etc."

Most spectacular specific suggestion came unofficially, in the lobbies. It was that the Americas should declare all waters within 300 miles of their shores strictly neutral, subject to wartime codes of search and seizure, convoy and contraband.

Other neighborly American readjustments of the week:

> The U. S. State Department opened direct negotiations with Colombia in an effort to persuade the Colombian Government to oust 20-odd German pilots, said to be German reserve officers, from service on the Scadia Airline, whose routes fly close by the Panama Canal.

> Costa Rican officials considered occupying Cocos Island, which lies about 550 miles southwest of Panama and which no nation claims, to prevent its use as a belligerent submarine base.

> For "noncompliance" by belligerent Great Britain with the terms of an 1859 treaty by which Guatemala granted Britain Honduras, Guatemala has for some time claimed the territory. By the treaty Great Britain agreed to build a road from Guatemala City to the Atlantic, but has never done so. This, claims Guatemala, voids the treaty. Last week busy Great Britain indicated it was "disposed" to negotiate.

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