Getting Tough

When France fell, jubilant Nazi agents in the U. S. announced that from now on Germany would begin to get tough with the U. S. They even named a date when tough talk and tougher action would begin--Aug. 10, three months after the invasion of the Low Countries.

Last week it was apparent that the tough talk had started well ahead of schedule. It was not very impressive to begin with. Fortnight ago Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop launched an attack on the Monroe Doctrine on the eve of the Havana Conference (TIME, July 15). Last week Secretary of State Cordell Hull, before setting out for Havana with eight trade, monetary, agricultural and political experts, slapped back at another attempt to make trouble. From Costa Rica, Guatemala and Nicaragua came reports that Dr. Otto Reinebeck, German Minister to the Central American Republics, had circulated a note of warning among the small but touchy nations that lie near the Panama Canal.

One distinction of Cordell Hull's term as Secretary of State has been his personal success at Latin-American Conferences. Almost singlehanded he saved the seventh Pan American Conference of 1933 at Montevideo, unobtrusively calling on Latin-American Foreign Ministers with a personal good-neighborliness that disarmed suspicion. When Mr. Hull flared up at the new Nazi attempt to influence the Conference, he used a tough word: he called it "intimidation." There was no theory, he said, on which any nation could attack the Havana meeting; there was no reason for any nation to attack the sovereign rights of the countries involved. That sounded good in Central America. President Carias of Honduras praised Secretary Hull's tough talk; Central Americans announced that they were paying no attention to the German warning.

Cartel. The character of the U. S. delegation made it plain that the U.S. viewed the biggest Nazi threat in South America as economic. No U.S. military or naval experts were going. With Secretary Hull went Adolf Berle, Assistant Secretary of State, creator of the cartel plan by which the U. S. would block Nazi pressures on South America.

The Department of Commerce sent Finance Expert Grosvenor Jones; Agriculture sent its Director of Foreign Agricultural Relations, Leslie Wheeler; the Treasury sent its monetary expert, close-mouthed Harry White. State Department technicians included young Laurence Duggan, who became chief of the Division of American Republics when only 30. But the mission was full of seasoned oldsters like 54-year-old William Dawson, Ambassador to Panama; 57-year-old Legal Expert Green Hackworth.

Whether these men could achieve anything depended on more than Latin-American reaction to the U. S. cartel plan. Jesse Cottrell, Washington correspondent and onetime Minister to Bolivia, flatly declared that they could, gave an imposing list of reasons. Said he: responsible Latin-Americans want to be united in a "stop Hitler" drive. If the U.S. makes as vast a readjustment as is called for by a $5,000,000,000 cartel, the Conference will also provide for:

1) Reaffirmation of the Good-Neighbor policy.

2) Approval of the Monroe Doctrine.

3) Pan-American cooperation in taking over Dutch, French and British possessions if threatened by Germany.

4) Organization of a general defense program of the 20 Republics, cooperating with the U. S.

5) Exchange of Army and Navy officers to improve the armies.

6) Further restriction of Nazi, Russian and Italian immigration.

7) Export-Import bank loans for the construction of Latin-American railways and highways.

Responsibility. Though many a danger spot remained, some preConference complications had been negotiated. In Havana, Ambassador to Cuba George Messersmith delivered a final warning that no credence could be placed in protestations by "aggressive European countries" that they had no interest in the Western Hemisphere: "With its great natural wealth (it) is considered by these States as their ultimate conquest. . . . They are prepared to sow discord between the States as well as within the States by raising every internal question on which there may be differences." But, said the Ambassador, the American States, with the example of Europe before them, would not be misled "either by fair promises or by threats of force."

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