Lese Majeste

It was lese majeste for the Italian consul, Amadeo Barletta, to break the tobacco monopoly of the Dominican Republic's Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. It was lese majeste against Benito Mussolini, a greater dictator than Trujillo, when Trujillo clapped Barletta into jail and confiscated his tobacco company on dubious charges of an assassination plot (TIME, May 13). Last week a third and greater act of lese majeste was in the making, as Mussolini moved to get his consul out of jail.

The third would have been against the U. S. Government, which for 112 years has reserved for itself alone the right to spank Latin American troublemakers. But President Roosevelt has shrugged off the responsibilities of the Monroe Doctrine, told Latin America that the Colossus of the North, reformed into a Good Neighbor, would not forcibly interfere in its affairs. In theory this means that, in such a case as Barletta's, the U. S. would let Mussolini do his own spanking, send his own warboat to Santo Domingo, where Dictator Trujillo quietly runs one of the world's most efficient little Terrors. However, in practice, an Italian warboat in the Caribbean would hurt U. S. prestige as much as it would hurt Trujillo. For that reason the State Department last week called in the Dominican Republic's Minister to the U. S., Rafael Brache, put a quiet little bee in his ear. Minister Brache sent his Government a long cablegram, flew down to Santo Domingo to amplify it. Last week, before he had arrived, Trujillo set $50,000 bail for Barletta. Barletta's friends began trying to scrape up the $50,000 and for the moment Mussolini put his warboat back in his pocket.

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