Apotheosis

"DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM!" An expectant hush settled over the high marble hall of the Chamber of Deputies in Buenos Aires last week and Franklin Roosevelt had just opened his mouth to speak, when down from the topmost gallery snarled these insulting words. Instant and tactful cheers from the audience drowned out their echo. Dr. Saavedra Lamas, Argentine Foreign Minister, craned his neck to catch sight of the offender.

He was unsuccessful because Argentine army officers had smothered the heckler, were dragging him out of the hall. Out of sight, the heckler's identity was thus concealed from all present except the host of the occasion, Argentina's President Agustin Justo.

General Justo must have been embarrassed. A few moments before, he had opened the Inter-American Peace Conference with many flattering references to "the illustrious President Roosevelt." The voice from the gallery, well he knew, was that of his own son, handsome Liborio Justo, who only recently had humiliated the President by being deported from Brazil as an undesirable Red. Next day Buenos Aires' papers tactfully refrained from identifying the one voice in South America lifted against Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose supercharged personality was in the course of bewitching a second continent.

If President Justo was embarrassed at the momentary painful scene in the Chamber of Deputies, smiling President Roosevelt was not.* When young Heckler Justo cried out, President Roosevelt merely waved aside the interruption benignantly and began: "Members of the American family of nations. My friends:" Hastily the delegates clapped earphones on their heads to hear his words simultaneously translated into Portuguese (for the Brazilians), French (for the Haitians), Spanish (for other Latin Americans)./- Little world-shaking advice did the President have to give but he won loud applause when he declared: "Can we, the republics of the New World, help the Old World to avert the catastrophe which impends? Yes, I am confident we can," and again when he cried: "Let no man or woman forget that there is no profit in war." Loud bravos and applause followed his conclusion. Four days after this thrilling start, the delegates managed to recover their composure, organize their Conference, hear Secretary of State Hull propound his metaphoric "Pillars of Peace" (see p. 18).

Meantime, President Roosevelt had gone on to new triumphs. That night he dined officially at Government House.

Next noon Agustin Justo and 73 others lunched officially at the U. S. Embassy and Franklin Roosevelt made them a practical little speech assuring them that he would do his best to have modified the quarantine restriction which keeps Argentine meat out of the U. S.* By way of gratitude for this friendliness, the Argentine Co-Operative of Meat Producers sent the carcasses of six swine and six lambs, also six beef tenderloins and a choice assortment of veal kidneys down to the Indianapolis as a parting gift.

Greatest tribute of all was Buenos Aires' farewell. The two Presidents drove down to the dock in a downpour of cold summer rain. Not only did 10,000 drenched soldiers present arms along the line of march, but many times as many soaking Argentineans turned out to wave farewell to this simpatico Yankee. For once Franklin Roosevelt consented to ride in a limousine on a bad day. The car's roof was plastered with the sopping petals of flowers thrown from balconies. At the waterside President Roosevelt stopped to shake hands with the Argentine chauffeur, who beamed from ear to ear at the unexpected honor. The crowd cheered filial devotion as Lieut. Colonel James Roosevelt buttoned a yellow slicker up around his father's neck. "Apres vous," said the bilingual President of the U. S. to the President of Argentina, and followed him up the gangplank.

On the deck of the Indianapolis final farewells took place. Host Justo presented his guest with a poncho made of virgin vicuna wool. The two Presidents exchanged a genuine bear hug. Everyone else was shaken by the hand and touched to the heart. The last that Buenos Aires saw of Franklin Roosevelt he was standing on the bridge as the Indianapolis pulled out into sluggish, shoreless Rio de la Plata, waving a blue and white scarf, the national colors of Argentina.

That was not Franklin Roosevelt's last of South America, however. Next morning the Indianapolis docked at Montevideo and he came down the gangplank literally into the arms of Dr. Gabriel Terra, Uruguay's beaming President. They had a three-hour drive, passed 200,000 applauding Uruguayans, and Lieut. Colonel Roosevelt laid a wreath on the monument of Uruguay's liberator, General Jose Artigas. There followed another official luncheon at which Dr. Terra praised his own New Deal in Uruguay and then, with Latin preoccupation with domesticity, declared: "I raise my glass in a toast to Mrs. Roosevelt, whom I see in my mind, following day by day and with increasing emotion, your triumphal journey to these friendly republics: To the companion of your days, a kindly and generous woman." Franklin Roosevelt made suitable reply and after another bear hug boarded the Indianapolis.

In the admiral's cabin he held a Uruguayan press conference for newshawks, Latin & U. S., each of whom had spent the day under the surveillance of an individually assigned detective. Before the President's departure, the able Montevideo police chief sent a delegation aboard to pay tribute at the coffin of dead U. S. Secret Servant Gus Gennerich. Then, still smiling, Franklin Roosevelt sailed for home, having had, as Santiago, Chile's El Mercurio declared, "The greatest apotheosis of his career."

*Only once last week did the U. S. President's sure sense of how to pluck the strings of Latin American hearts fail him completely. At a press conference at the U. S. Embassy he welcomed 50 Latin newshawks. Deftly he put them at their ease, took charge of the interview. When asked whether the U. S. would join the League of Nations (of which Argentina is a loyal adherent) he said, with a frankness which could provoke no antagonism, that he felt sure he could say the answer was "no." Then a hesitant newshawk in broken English asked the question which left him for once at a total loss: Please, would he relate a small moral anecdote for the edification of the young?

/-Official languages of the Conference are Spanish, Portuguese, French and English. All official documents must be rendered in at least Spanish and English.

*Imposed by Congress nominally because of the hoof and mouth disease, it helps keep Argentine beef out of the U. S., a protection for which U. S. beef producers are grateful.

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