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Would its tough Argentine policy be a success? The U.S. would get a quick answer at this Sunday's election. If democratic candidate Jose P. Tamborini won, so had the U.S. If totalitarian Peron were elected President, it would take more than words to blast him out of Argentina's Casa Rosada.

Campaign Finals. As time grew short, Peron quickened his already kinetic campaign. He harangued a Buenos Aires mass meeting which turned into a circus because tumultuous rain had shorted loudspeakers, evinced fear for his life ("any move against my person will bring civil war in 48 hours"), barnstormed up & down potent Buenos Aires province.

Peron tried to make capital out of the U.S. Blue Book charges (TIME, Feb. 18), called them undiplomatic, then himself screamed: "crude lies." To a reporter he blandly declared: "If I'm a fascist, you are Mary Pickford." But the Strong Man's attempt to make the election a personal quarrel with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Spruille Braden ("Peron or Braden, that is the issue"), got a jolt when Harry Truman stated flatly that, as President, he stood behind every word in the Blue Book.

That Juan Domingo Peron and the Argentine Government favored the Nazis was hardly news. Outspoken old Cordell Hull had said that a year and a half ago. But the very bluntness of the U.S. Blue Book charge that Peron & Co. had actually conspired with the Nazis, the chapter & verse on names, places and methods profoundly shocked the Americas. Argentines seemed stunned.

The U.S. State Department had taken a chance in throwing its haymaker. Argentines, proud of their national dignity, might unite behind Peron as they had when Cordell Hull blasted away at him. That would mean victory for Peron in the forthcoming election. Other Latin nations might jib at lone-handed, stiff-necked U.S. action. But last week press and unofficial reaction throughout the hemisphere backed up the U.S. tough talk. If the Blue Book had not helped Argentina's democratic opposition, neither had it hurt it, apparently.

Hue & Cry. There were dissenters. Many a thoughtful U.S. citizen asked what State Department policy was, anyhow. Why had Edward R. Stettinius Jr. and idealistic Nelson Rockefeller, presumably having much of the dope on the Argentines at the time, led the fight for Argentina's admission to the UNO at San Francisco last April? Others, including many a Latin, noted that the U.S. attack came at the climax of the Argentine presidential campaign, called it intervention.

Colts & Mausers. Intervention or not, buoyant Jose Tamborini, full of vigor and confidence, took to the country at week's end. He was off for Argentina's far west and the Province of San Juan, where Peron supporters had split. Because their previous campaign train had been stoned and shot at, the Tamborini crowd now took pains to pack Colt .45s and palm-sized Mauser .25s (the boudoir special).

This week Tamborini supporters taunted the Strong Man's descamisados (shirtless ones) with a timely twist on Juan Domingo Peron's middle name and the Sunday, Feb. 24 election date: "Domingo [Spanish for Sunday] will fall on the 24th."

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