Hemispheric

A NEW DOCTRINE FOR THE AMERICAS--Charles Wertenbaker--Viking ($2)

On the Plains they used to say: "Between Amarillo and the North Pole there's nothing but a barbed-wire fence." They scarcely gave a thought to what lay between them and the South Pole. But most Americans lost some of this geographic insouciance with the fall of France. Last week an important book gave this awakening curiosity some facts about U S neighbors to the south.

Author was Charles Wertenbaker TIME'S Forelgn News Editor. His book begins with Sept. 27, 1940--the day that Germany, Italy and Japan loudly proclaimed their alliance against the U. S. Same day the U.S. Senate ratified the Act of Havana. That Act provided that the American republics might seize any European possessions in this hemisphere which were threatened by other European powers. The Havana conference also agreed 1) that foreign aggression against any one of the 21 American republics is aggression against all; 2) that they should cooperate for mutual defense.

The hemispheric policy with which the new Axis partners were thus confronted had been seven years in the making. It was a policy which, after a hundred years of faults and fumbling, was designed to make fast friends of 125,000,000 other Americans who had never before quite trusted us." Wertenbaker credits the complementary statesmanship of three very different Americans for this success--the hemispheric consciousness of President Roosevelt, the simple candor of Cordell Hull and the behind-the-scenes effectiveness of Sumner Welles. Says Author Wertenbaker: "The President is the idea man, Hull translates the ideas into policy, Welles attends to the details." At Lima, Hull singlehandedly held the anti-hemispheric forces to a draw. How strong these forces are Wertenbaker makes clear in his sections on Nazi activities in South America, especially the Uruguay incident which compelled the U. S. to send a cruiser to Montevideo for fear of a Nazi uprising

Sometimes Editor Wertenbaker seems to beat his breast a little too fiercely over the past sins of Yankee imperialism. But this is a question of emphasis. To critics who fear that the new doctrine of hemispheric solidarity may supplant the Monroe Doctrine, he gives a flat no. "What was done at the Havana conference . . . did not make the Monroe Doctrine multilateral. The Monroe Doctrine was, and is, a unilateral declaration of U. S. policy against Europe. . . . The new doctrine ... is multilateral and does two things:

1) it governs the relations of the 21 American republics with one another;

2) it supplements the Monroe Doctrine with a Doctrine for all the Americas against the world."

This doctrine, says Editor Wertenbaker, "is still evolving. . . . Our first job is to see that the suit fits. If it fits the nations of the Western Hemisphere, then, with alterations, it may one day fit the world."

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