ARGENTINA

"If You Want a Good Tip"

In the plushy main dining room of the Buenos Aires Plaza Hotel, the British Chamber of Commerce sat down to its monthly luncheon. Guest of honor: Viscount Templewood, the suave old Sir Samuel Hoare of Baldwin-Chamberlain diplomacy, visiting Argentina in the cause of British commerce. Also present: half the Argentine Cabinet. As the savory was cleared away and the Viscount rose to speak, an unidentified British businessman leaped from his place and yelled: "Now you can talk to these people as they should be talked to."

The incident highlighted the edgy mood of British businessmen, who of late have noted a stiffening in the Argentine official attitude toward British investment. So long as Argentina got the icy treatment from the U.S., the Farrell military government leaned over backward to be friendly. British investors, reconciled to expropriation under Peron's plan for taking over foreign interests, still hoped for fat payments. But now that the U.S. and Argentina seemed likely to patch up their differences, the Argentines were getting tougher.

Viceroys & Mailboxes. To regain official favor and explode the notion that Britain is washed out as a great power, the British had brought up big guns like Lord Temple-wood and ex-War Secretary Leslie Hore-Belisha, scheduled ex-Viceroy of India Lord Linlithgow to follow. Said Lord Templewood last week: "Enemies point to our war wounds and say that we are already dead or dying. ... If you want a good tip, my British fellow countrymen and my Argentine friends, put your money again on the horse that so often won in the past and is still capable of running true to form and certain of many other classic victories."

Since 1713, when British merchantmen began putting in at the River Plate, the British have had the inside track in Argentina. Britain is traditionally Argentina's best customer, and one of her chief suppliers. The railways are British-owned and operated, 5 o'clock tea at Harrods is British, futbol is British. When an Argentine pledges his honor he gives the palabra de ingles, "the word of an Englishman."

Buy British. The British have other advantages: the spunk that pushed friendly trade; the spunk that pushed British South American Airways across the South Atlantic ahead of other nations (TIME, April 1); -L-150,000,000 of war-accumulated credits that Argentines can most conveniently spend in England; and the conviction that Peron will be smart enough to look beyond 1946 to years when Argentina will be glad of the traditional British appetite for Argentine roast beef. Such considerations, with Argentina's sticky domestic finances, suggested that Britain's $2-billion investment in the Argentine would take a lot of liquidating.

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