Evil Eye?

"Happy the people Whose annals are brief."

The name of a new President was set down last week in the voluminous annals of Nicaragua, crammed for centuries with an almost unexampled record of Spanish tyrants and Latin American usurpers. The new President, Senor Adolfo Diaz, was elected by the Nicaraguan Congress in joint session, an assembly so accustomed to being bullied by armed factions in Nicaragua that its acts must always be regarded with suspicion. Apparently President Diaz was elected because he is known to be persona grata to the U. S., which intervened to support him when he was previously elected President in 1910 and again in 1913.

Senor Diaz's latest elevation to the Presidency followed the "Peace Conference" between the revolutionaries of Nicaragua and the former Nicaraguan Dictator General Chamorro, which took place aboard the U. S. cruiser Rochester, anchored in Nicaraguan waters (TIME, Oct. 4). Reputedly during the conference, Rear Admiral Julian L. Latimer-- commanding the Rochester took General Chamorro aside and imparted to him some gruff sailorly home truths. Thereafter General Chamorro, having made up his mind that the U. S. would not recognize him as President, resigned that office, which he had held by force, and Senor Diaz was elected. Instant Recognition. U. S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg assumedly heaved a sigh of relief at the turn of Nicaraguan affairs, last week, for he immediately extended recognition. President Diaz, tactful, was moved in a burst of gratitude to the U. S. to sanction the long mooted sale of 51% of the stock of the Nicaragua National Bank to the Guarantee Trust Co. of Manhattan, an institution which has more than once made history in Latin America. Said President Diaz, to blast any suspicion of U. S. "dollar diplomacy": "If the Bank of Nicaragua had been controlled by U. S. interests it would not have been robbed of $161,000 [TIME, May 17] by armed revolutionaries of the Nicaraguan Liberal Party."

Vexations. The Nicaraguan Liberals, who have been skirmishing and countermarching in an effort to overthrow Dictator Chamorro, were vexed last week at the inauguration of President Diaz whom they equally detest.

They recalled that Senor Carlos Solorzano was elected President of Nicaragua for the term 1925-29. He resigned under duress last January after General Chamorro seized power. The Vice President elected with Senor Solorzano, Senor Sacasa, was able to escape and has not resigned. Nicaraguan Liberals consider that Senor Sacasa, not Senor Diaz, should be recognized as President by the U. S.

Bogie. Unfortunately for themselves the Nicaraguan ' Liberals are generally believed at Washington to have received military support or at least munitions from Mexico. This has so alarmed even the supposedly impartial U. S. Associated Press that that organization headed one of its lengthiest despatches last week with the following sentence: "The spectre of a Mexican-fostered Bolshevist hegemony intervening between the United States and the Panama Canal has thrust itself into American-Mexican relations."

At Mexico City the newspaper Excelsior retorted: "The real truth is that the Yankee Government pretends to exercise absolute dominion over all America, and views with an evil eye Mexico or any other country able to have any foreign influence weakening that of the United States."

Significance. Aside from U. S. financial interests in Nicaragua which are considerable, the U. S. holds a perpetual permit to build an inter-ocean canal across the Nicaraguan isthmus which was purchased by the U. S. during the Taft Administration (1913). Throughout the past decade successive U. S. Administrations, of whatever party, have kept a detachment of Marines in Nicaragua until last year, when their withdrawal was followed immediately by the coup d' etat of General Chamorro. The Nicaraguan Administrations upheld by the U. S. have apparently been obnoxious to a majority of Nicaraguans, but in upholding one more such regime Secretary Kellogg is only following scrupulously a well established U. S. tradition. The incidental question of abstract "right" faded years ago from the realm of practical consideration. Large on the practical horizon looms the fact that the U. S. has secured for Nicaragua a series of administrations which if they were not wanted were marked by a relative peace in which Nicaraguans were at liberty to pursue commercial activities in an orderly and prosperous fashion even if they have not done so.

*Not to be confused with Major General William B. Lassiter who chairmaned the Tacna-Arica Plebiscitary Commission which was eventually unable to adjust the differences of Chile and Peru over that territory.