Ringmaster

As an international ringmaster, Juan Domingo Peron had a busy week. He cracked the whip on the home front, played with the Russian bear, blew his whistle at the British lion, kept a wary eye on closer neighbors.

Around Argentina's big marble Palacio del Congreso, Peron lined up 700 cops, then told the deputies inside to okay the Act of Chapultepec and the United Nations Charter. Grudgingly, the nationalist majority obeyed.

But Peron's act did not mean that Argentina (or the U.S.) was ready to let bygones be bygones. As Foreign Minister Juan A. Bramuglia pointed out, the Act of Chapultepec only bound Argentina to attend another Pan-American conference. In Washington, State Department officials heard from U.S. Ambassador George Messersmith that Peron would not toss out old Nazi friends like Ludwig Freude. And the U.S. still stood on Secretary Byrnes's "deeds, not promises."

Bid from the Bear. Into the port of Buenos Aires hove the S.S. Akademik Krilov with new Soviet Ambassador Mikhail Sergeev and a cargo of scarce newsprint. The Ambassador was expected to sign a new trade treaty; the newsprint backed his bid.

Baffled Lion. A British trade mission was getting nowhere. Peron, who had assumed control of all meat shipments abroad (including those of British-owned packing plants), wanted to hike beef prices 200%, asked 2 1/2% interest on Argentina's $750 million sterling credit, now frozen in Britain. Mission Chief Sir Wilfrid Eady was surprised by this "cold hostility." He packed his negotiators across the Plata Estuary to Uruguay, waited to see if Peron would change his mind.

Aloof Neighbors. On the South American front, Peron's fortunes were low. His attempt to blackmail the new Bolivian Government by holding up needed wheat shipments had flopped. The U.S. had stepped in, agreed to send Bolivia enough wheat to see the year out. Paraguay had slipped from under the Argentine thumb, showed some stirrings of democracy. Chile and Uruguay were going ahead with democratic election campaigns. Peron's dream of a Bloque Austral (southern bloc) had folded--for the moment. But Juan Domingo was still trying. Last week he signed a new trade treaty with Ecuador, got a preferential deal on natural rubber for Argentina's yawning tire factories.

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