Axis Against Axis

The ultimate goal of U.S. relations with the 20 Latin-American Republics, through eight years of patient policymaking, has been common action in common cause against common enemies. Last week, within 24 hours of the U.S. seizure of German and Italian ships in U.S. ports (TIME, April 7), there was hell & high water from Tampico to the Strait of Magellan.

>In Tampico Commodore Luis Hurtado de Mendoza, commander of the Naval District, sent messages to the captains of twelve German and Italian vessels lying in harbor, summoning them ashore for a conference. As soon as the skippers set foot on land they were arrested. Boarding parties of Marines then took possession of the ships. Aboard one, the Italian tanker Fede, they reported finding a TNT bomb rigged to explode when the engine was turned over. Another Italian tanker, the Atlas, was already sinking when they boarded her. Her skipper, Captain Lelio Fazzi, had not been lured ashore, had stayed to scuttle his ship. The Marines clambered back into their launches, shouted to Captain Fazzi to abandon ship. "I have done my duty," puffed Captain Fazzi, his feet planted in the rising water. The Marines kept shouting to the sailors to jump, until somebody noticed that before opening the sea cocks the captain had moved his ship into shallow water and made a hawser fast to shore.

>In the harbor of Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, four tankers, three of them Italian and one German, burst into flame before Venezuelan officials could seize them. Three other Italian ships were boarded and seized. As the tankers blazed offshore, threatening the oil-soaked docks, angry crowds rushed from the harbor to the center of town, set fire to the German-owned Gambrinus Hotel.

>In Havana, where one Italian freighter was seized, the home of Minister of State Dr. Jose Manuel Cortina was bombed--in reprisal, Dr. Cortina charged.

>In Guayaquil, Ecuador, a few hours after German Vice Consul Juan Ruperti had visited the German steamer Cerigo, an Ecuadorian boarding party tried to seize her. Arson beat them to it.

>From Callao, Peru, two German ships sailed in the night without clearance papers. Next day the Peruvian cruiser Almirante Grau found them burning 200 miles offshore. Two larger ships which tried to sail were halted by five shots from the cruiser Coronel Bolognesi. Their crews fired them in the harbor. At Paita another German ship was burned. Peru retaliated by seizing the hangars and workshops and two Junkers planes of the Lufthansa airline, by taking possession of the assets of Lufthansa and German shipping companies.

>From Rio de Janeiro three Axis ships had sailed hurriedly just before the U.S. began seizing vessels. A few days later a Brazilian court granted Britain's Enemy Shipping Claims Commission an order holding two German and two Italian ships at Rio for nonpayment of fuel bills. Since the British commission had tried to get such an order since last June, it was plain what Brazil was up to. Police boarded the four ships to guard against sabotage.

>Uruguay seized two Italian vessels.

>Only Argentina and Chile delayed action, but in Argentina, where there are 16 Axis ships, a bill ordering their confiscation was before the Chamber of Deputies. The Chilean Navy started hunting for a launch that was reported refueling a German raider somewhere near the Strait of Magellan.

Score: Axis ships seized, 21; destroyed, 11; still unmolested in Latin-American ports, 40.

Significance of this action was far greater than the average U.S. citizen realized. In its efforts to get a common foreign policy with Latin America the U.S. has been hampered by Latin America's jealously guarded sense of independence. Latin-American countries will not commit themselves in advance to follow U.S. policy; and the U.S., jealous in turn of its recently acquired reputation for respecting the Latin-American countries' independence, will not ask them to. Hence the U.S. had not known how far Latin America would go in following the new activist U.S. policy. Last week it found out.

Latin America was so nearly solid behind the U.S. against the Berlin-Rome Axis that, in effect, an All-American Axis had been created. Whether Latin-American statesmen had been moved by the Good Neighbor policy or simply by a desire to jump on the band wagon now that the U.S. was acting vigorously, the immediate effect was the same. Latin Americans are realists, and active U.S. support for Britain had made the cause of freedom worth joining.

A taxicab driver in Bogota spoke up for the people. Said he: "This is the only kind of action those bastards in Berlin can understand."

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