Important Visit

To the White House last week went tall, brooding Dr. Raul Morales Beltrami, who, as Chile's Minister of the Interior, holds the second-highest political office in one of the only two Latin American countries which have not as yet broken relations with the Axis. What he and Franklin Roosevelt discussed was their own secret. Yet observers in North and South America were sure that the visit presaged an early move by Chile toward complete partnership in the United Nations.

Chile, with a long coastline exposed to possible Japanese attack, has been slow to take official sides in World War II; her careful neutrality moved Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles to make a pungent speech pointing out Axis espionage operations in Chile. If and when Chile breaks with the Axis, and her President Juan Antonio Rios makes the Washington visit which he postponed after the Welles speech, it will be the next to last step (the last: Argentina) in uniting the Western Hemisphere on our side.

Last week the President also:

> Embarrassed his Office of War Information and, his old spelling teacher by writing Generalissimo with two l's in a longhand letter transmitted to China's Chiang Kai-shek at the opening of a new radiophoto link with Chungking. OWI hastily blotted the extra l with ink eradicator. Chinese spokesmen, with traditional politeness, took the incident more calmly. They often spelled Generalissimo with two l's when using English, they said; moreover, what was the difference after it was rendered into Chinese?

> Turned over to Economic Czar James F. Byrnes the Presidential power to arbitrate disputes between Food Czar Claude R. Wickard and any agencies that might get in his way.

> Sacrificed Price Boss Leon Henderson to Congressional critics, decided to appoint Michigan's Senator Prentiss M. Brown in his place (see below).

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