Pan-American Party

Simon Bolivar, hero of Latin America, called the first Pan-American Congress. It met in Panama in 1826 and wrote a treaty of "perpetual confederation." Typical of that meeting were two facts: only one nation, Colombia, ever ratified the treaty; the U. S. delegates, appointed by President John Quincy Adams, arrived after the meeting had adjourned.

The First (officially numbered) Pan-American Conference was not assembled until 1889, called by Secretary of State James Gillespie Elaine. Six others have followed. At these meetings, many more treaties have been written and most of them have remained wholly or partly unratified. At most of the meetings the U. S. missed the diplomatic boat by failing to win the confidence of its 20 fellow republics. Nowadays these meetings are regular quinquennial affairs. The next is due in 1938. No ordinary meeting therefore was that which met this week in Buenos Aires.

It was an "extraordinary" InterAmerican Conference for the Maintenance of Peace, and it was called for by extraordinary circumstances. Supposedly these circumstances were the "altogether favorable opportunity" resulting from the settlement of the bloody bout between Bolivia and Paraguay. Actually the favorable opportunity was created not in the jungles of the Chaco but in the long corridors of the U. S. State Department. Part of it was the long planning of Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles, one of the abler gentlemen in Latin-American diplomacy. More of it was a wholly new era of U. S.-Latin-American relations resulting from Cordell Hull's inability to be anything but a kindly judge from Tennessee. The rest of it was Franklin Roosevelt.

More than a year ago Mr. Hull and Mr. Welles began making the diplomatic arrangements which flowered when Franklin Roosevelt last January wrote 20 identical personal notes to his 20 fellow Presidents suggesting the conference which his State Department had arranged. And last week as the S. S. American Legion tied up at Buenos Aires, Messrs. Hull & Welles stood on its deck, acting once more as advance men for Franklin Roosevelt's personal appearance. On the pier a tall professorial man with a long stiff neck and high stiff collar frantically waved his hat. He was their host, Dr. Carlos Saavedra Lamas, Argentine Foreign Minister, who 24 hours before had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1936 and who was so delighted that he could hardly wait to come aboard to receive their congratulations.

Latin Americans. That afternoon Mr. Hull paid his official call on Argentina's President Agustin Justo and next day he began to make his round of the delegations. At the last Pan-American Conference at Montevideo three years ago Mr. Hull flabbergasted and charmed his Latin-American colleagues: instead of paying them formally arranged visits he dropped in unannounced and waited his turn to be received; instead of going in top hat and cutaway, he clapped his grey fedora on his thin white hair and simply went calling.* As a class, Latin-American diplomats have been schooled abroad, but in Europe, not the U. S. Their clothes, their luxuries, not to mention their ideas of international affairs all come from Europe, and those of them who learned English in their youth did so in order to converse with the British. The U. S. was to them an uncongenial nation which continually affronted them by reciting the Monroe Doctrine, by landing Marines and by being simply crude.

Far from finding Cordell Hull crude, they were disarmed by his gentle smile, his unquestionable sincerity. To them the ''Good Neighbor Policy" was only a phrase, until Cordell Hull's plain Tennessean neighborliness made it suddenly credible.

So last week he had many warm personal welcomes as he made his rounds. The important men he had to see included: Chile's Foreign Minister, Miguel Cruchaga Tocornal, formerly Ambassador to Washington, one of the wisest men in South American diplomacy, so discreet and so personally disinterested that the diplomats of other nations continually ask his aid and advice.

Bolivia's Foreign Minister, Enrique Finot, also recently a minister to Washington; tall, swart, fiery, jingoistic, still an aggressive U. Sophobe.

Brazil's Foreign Minister, Jose Carlos de Macedo Scares, one of the biggest businessmen in Sao Paulo, owner of vast coffee plantations, a student of economics and diplomacy, the kind of man who wears comfortable and badly wrinkled linen suits, is not interested in social functions and rides to his office in full state behind a chauffeur and a liveried footman.

Uruguay's Foreign Minister, Jose Espalier, a fluent orator who was trained for the law but never practiced it, who at 70 looks like anything but the rich man that he is. His hat is always crushed, due to his habit of carrying it under his left arm, and over his wing collar his cheeks are always bristly since he uses a barber's clippers instead of a razor.

Mexico's Ambassador to the U. S., Francisco Castillo Najera, a one time army doctor, by avocation a poet and musician, a lusty trencherman who loves life and lives it, one of the homeliest, most decorated and at times brutally outspoken of diplomats, another of the most respected for his intelligence.

Argentina's Ambassador to the U. S., Felipe A. Espil, sleek and olive-skinned, most of whose career has been in the U. S., who some years ago was a good friend of the divorced Mrs. Spencer (now better known as Mrs. Wallis Simpson). Three years ago he married pretty Courtney Letts Stillwell Borden of Chicago. Appointed to the important post of Secretary General of the Buenos Aires conference, Senor Espil has for the first time taken his twice-divorced wife home to introduce her to the frigid salons of Argentina's strictly Catholic high society.

Added to all these there was, of course, Nobel Prizeman Saavedra Lamas, one of the most important and one of the most difficult to handle. Dr. Saavedra is a rich man of excellent family and he married the daughter of a former President. He was educated in a Jesuit school, went to Paris to complete his education, traveled much in Europe, went home to be trained in the anti-U. S. atmosphere of Argentine diplomatic circles. He endowed and sat in a chair of labor legislation at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1932, when General Agustin P. Justo became President after two years of revolutionary government, Dr. Saavedra became Foreign Minister.

Since then he has run Argentina's foreign affairs without brooking any interference from General Justo. Shrewd as well as pompous, he frequently works 20 hours, smokes 100 cigarets a day--often any brand he can borrow from his aides.

He belongs to the Curzon school of high-hat diplomacy and it was a triumph of U. S. diplomacy when he waved that hat at Mr. Hull.

It all began at Montevideo three years ago when Secretary Hull showed him studied consideration, sent flowers to Senora Saavedra. It continued through the settlement of the Chaco dispute which Dr. Saavedra made entirely his own baby, even refusing election as President of the League of Nations Assembly to do so. Since Dr. Saavedra was adamant in rejecting all peace proposals which he did not originate, the U. S. delegate on the peace commission, Spruille Braden. carefully left the limelight to the distinguished Doctor. Again for the sake of his goodwill, the scene of the present conference was set at Buenos Aires so that Dr. Saavedra would become its president. More reluctantly Mr. Hull allowed the whole conference to be postponed for several months in order not to interfere with Dr. Saavedra's recent appearances at Geneva, and in diplomatic negotiations over the Spanish revolt. Mr. Hull, on the eve of his arrival in Buenos Aires, announced that Dr. Saavedra's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in the Chaco War was "most worthily bestowed in recognition of Mr. Saavedra Lamas's outstanding service to peace not only in recent months but in many years past. It will give me great pleasure to extend felicitations to him in person in Buenos Aires tomorrow."

Great Adventure. All this but served to pave the way for Franklin Roosevelt's arrival in Buenos Aires. Unlike Dr. Saavedra, Mr. Hull does not overshadow his President. The U. S. part in the conference at Buenos Aires will certainly be cut to fit Franklin Roosevelt's plans. The story by Arthur Krock of President Roosevelt's plans to invite Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and other chiefs of States to a diplomatic conference (TIME, Sept. 7) was almost too fantastic even to be a trial balloon. But observers know there is no fantasy in assuming that Franklin Roosevelt, having performed miracles in U. S. politics, hopes to round out his claim to a big place in history by participating in world affairs. Any European adventure would bring U. S. isolationists howling about his ears, but U. S. Presidents have a free rein to fool around in the western hemisphere. A Roosevelt Doctrine might succeed the defunct Monroe Doctrine if, on the basis of the Good Neighbor Policy, a great neutral bloc could be created in the Americas, assuring mutual American economic, political and military self-sufficiency if Europe and Asia should be engulfed in war. Such a creation might well be a springboard to boost the U. S. President to a place of direct influence in world politics, through the medium of belligerent boycott. Such a hope may well have inspired Franklin Roosevelt's eagerness to dash to Buenos Aires at a time when there were plenty of problems waiting for him in Washington with a new Congress only one month ahead.

Certainly it was a hopeful, happy Franklin Roosevelt who descended his gangplank from the cruiser Indianapolis to take the limelight on the stage that his advance men had set for him.

Good Servant. Biggest delegation at the peace conference is that of the U. S. It includes, however, more supernumeraries than potent workers. It includes "The Honorable'' Alexander F. Whitney, President of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen so that labor will not feel left out; Adolf A. Berle Jr., former brain-truster, because he wanted to go and had earned the right as a friend of the New Deal; Hon. Elise F. Musser, State Senator from Utah because she had worked hard in the campaign; Michael F. Doyle, international lawyer from Philadelphia and Dr. Charles G. Fenwick, professor of political science at Bryn Mawr, because they are Catholics; Dr. Samuel Guy Inman because he is a Protestant. The delegation even has a "special assistant," Mrs. Warren Delano Robbins, svelte widow of the President's cousin who was Minister to Canada. Besides all these there are a working staff from the State Department, the U. S. Ambassador to Argentina and the U. S. Minister to Bolivia. The entire delegation occupies two floors of Argentina's most fashionable hotel, the Alvear Palace, on the famous Avenida Alvear, a block from Avenida Callao. Many of the rooms have been converted into clattering clerical offices to handle the official doings of the group, whose direction rests chiefly with Secretary Hull and Assistant Sumner Welles.

They have not only side problems to keep out of the picture* but a mixed group of interests to contend with: Chile and several other nations whose political sympathies are with Fascism; Mexico whose sympathies are with Communism; Argentina who wants to support the League of Nations; Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and several small nations who would like to withdraw from the League of Nations to form an American League. Almost anything might come out of this combination because the agenda are broad enough to cover two continents. They permit the consideration of creating an Inter-American Court of Justice, of "measures tending toward closer association of the American Republics ... of co-operation with other international entities," of rules regarding the rights and duties of neutrals, of limitations of armament, of codifying international law, of tariff truces, customs agreements, financial co-operation and simply of "other measures." How Cordell Hull can shape these vague suggestions into a concrete program is a great question mark, but they exactly suit his temperament. No New Dealer, yet loyal to the New Deal, he held his peace during all the New Deal experiments, even bided his time while Raymond Moley and George Peek had their hour in the sun.

All the while he waited with the patience of a man who has a simple one-track philosophy and is willing to bide his time.

Today he has the reward of patience, of self-discipline and of that kind of shrewdness which sometimes is inherent in very simple men. Peace and trade are his sole philosophy and at Buenos Aires his single track, so far as man can see, goes on to that horizon.

He was born, the son of many generations of American farmers, on cleared land in the foothills of the Cumberlands, 100 miles from the nearest railroad. As a lad he rafted his father's logs 200 miles down the Cumberland River to market.

Like many another ambitious boy, he studied law, became a judge in Tennessee, went to Congress for 22 years, where he was the leading Democratic expert on taxation in Woodrow Wilson's era, went to the Senate in time to be drafted for Franklin Roosevelt's Cabinet. The nearest town to his birthplace in Pickett County, Tenn. was called Olympus.

His position as a diplomat has been built on eschewing all pretensions, by sticking very quietly and moderately to his point. His State Department does not stand high even by U. S. standards. Nearly all his Ambassadors are colorless and mediocre. There is not a Page, a Herrick, even a Dawes among them. He has no Under Secretary of State whatever since William Phillips was sent to Rome. The ablest man he had to leave behind him when he sailed to Buenos Aires was Assistant Secretary R. Walton Moore, who, able as he may be, is nearing 80. Yet by force of a simple character Cordell Hull is easily the biggest man in Franklin Roosevelt's Cabinet.

Like many good and patient men, Cordell Hull has played in good luck. In spite of his weakness in subordinates, when his chance came he had in Sumner Welles --wasp-waisted, double-breasted, Groton and Harvard, snobbish, capable and stiff--about the best man he could have had to take to Buenos Aires. In the long neglected field of Latin-American diplomacy, Sumner Welles is one of the few trained experts of the U. S.--a veteran of negotiations in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, a fluent speaker of Spanish, a man liked by South American diplomats because he years ago attacked the stupid imperialism of past U. S. foreign policy. Cordell Hull's second piece of good fortune was that when his chance came, it was at a moment when Franklin Roosevelt was eager to capitalize the Hull policies. Success may or may not crown his efforts but at last he has free rein, such as few U. S. statesmen ever have, to attempt the things that are his sole belief.

*So successful was this flagrant breach of Latin-American diplomatic etiquet that Franklin Roosevelt last week copied it, won vivas and much praise at Rio de Janeiro by appearing for his official welcome in a sack suit .

*Among them: the Chaco, which is settled really only in so far as Bolivia and Paraguay have temporarily exhausted their economic resources; an ephemeral revolution in Ecuador, where a regiment last week revolted, set up their artillery on a hill and put a few shells into the Presidential Palace.

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