Circumstantial Evidence

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk--Henry Thoreau.

Such circumstantial evidence finally convinced the cautiously jurisprudential Argentine Foreign Ministry that the two torpedoes which smacked into the plainly marked Argentine tanker Victoria off Hatteras six weeks ago (TIME, May 4) came from an Axis submarine. The Foreign Ministry cabled formal notes of protest to Berlin and Rome, which politely acknowledged receipt and added that they would reply "in due course."

What the replies would allege in self-justification or palliation was anybody's guess, and guess everybody did. Buenos Aires newspapers sarcastically guessed that the German sub-commander had mistaken the sky-blue-&-white markings of nonbelligerent Argentina for the medium-blue-&-white markings of belligerent Honduras, that he had failed to perceive 4-ft.-high letters reading REP. ARGENTINA. Best guess was that Germany and Argentina would repeat the routine following the 1940 torpedoing of the Argentine merchantman Uruguay off the Spanish coast: Argentina protested; Germany's reply was accepted; neither was ever published.

But it was doubtful whether any such dodge would satisfy either public opinion or Congress. The Chamber of Deputies peremptorily ordered double-talking Foreign Minister Enrique Ruiz Guinazu to appear before it this week to answer questions about foreign policy.

Meanwhile Germany had taken a new step to save her from embarrassment of Argentine protests over future ship sinkings on the U.S. east coast. She proclaimed that she had extended her submarine zone of operations to cover the whole U.S. Atlantic Coast, flatly warning, "Every ship which enters this zone after June 26, 1942 will expose itself to destruction."

To Argentina this meant the end of shipping with the U.S. except through Gulf ports--unless she was ready to stand up and talk back to the Nazis.

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