Triumphant Lights

The Nicaraguan Chamber of Deputies declared unconstitutional and voted down 23 to 17, last week, the bill which would have authorized U. S. supervision of the Nicaraguan election, next Fall (TIME, May 16).

After the vote, triumphant lights twinkled far into the night at the sumptuous Managua residence of famed onetime President of Nicaragua, General Emiliano Chamorro. He had defeated the bill. His potent, ancestral family controls the Conservative electorate of Nicaragua; and that control enabled General Chamorro to wipe out, last week, his old score against the U. S. State Department, which refused to recognize a government set up by him, some years ago, after a coup d'etat.

From Washington, D. C., the State Department reaffirmed its inflexible purpose to supervise a "fair" election in Nicaragua. Jurists opined that both the Constitution and Chamber of Deputies of Nicaragua might possibly be circumvented by having President Adolfo Diaz of Nicaragua (a U. S. puppet) authorize U. S. supervision of the election by Presidential decree, after the Chamber has risen.

Amid this doubtful embroglio Brigadier General Logan Feland, commanding the 1,200 U. S. Marines in Nicaragua, issued a general exhortation to "untiring exertion" by Marines during "the next two months," because after that the rainy season will set in and thereafter it would admittedly be impossible to subdue the forces of General Augusto Calderon Sandino, hardy guerilla & patriot, now indomitably in arms against U. S. intervention.