The Vacant Chair

Canada's good neighbor, Senator Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg of Michigan, is worried about a vacant chair. For 37 years, ever since the Pan American Union moved into its marble-and-mahogany palace on Washington's 17th Street, 21 chairs (one for each of the American republics) have stood around the board of governors' table. In the basement, under wraps, is a 22nd chair, identical with the others except that on its high back are carved the name and arms of Canada.

"It has been empty long enough," cried Vandenberg last week at a Pan American Day celebration in Washington. ". . . By every rule of righteousness [Canada] is eligible to this association. ... I would welcome the final and total New World unity which will be nobly dramatized when the 22nd chair is filled and our continental brotherhood is complete from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn."

The U.S. has not always wanted Canada in. The Dominion, with its tie to the Crown in London, was once regarded as an outpost of the Old World. But now, Canada would be welcomed as another Anglo-Saxon voice at a predominantly Latin table. The constitution of the Pan American Union can easily be changed at the Bogota conference this year to admit the Dominion.

Most Canadians still have no idea what the Pan American Union is. The others ask: What has it ever done? A majority of the Dominion's people still look to London and are likely to oppose any entangling alliance which may weaken the bond with the British Commonwealth. French Canadians want no part of Latin America's troubles. Orderly Canadians regard Latin Americans as Latin folk given to turmoil and revolution.

Alone among the Dominion's leading newspapers, the Montreal Star supported Good Neighbor Vandenberg: "Many of our interests run with those of the union. We weaken our position by our lack of membership." The Government long ago decided that it would not occupy the 22nd chair until the people of Canada prodded it, and last week there was little prodding. The Ottawa Journal epitomized the Dominion's attitude: "Wouldn't it be better for us to stand aloof--working with nobody in particular, but the friends of all?"

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