Neighborly Lesson

Last week there arrived in the U.S. an open letter to Good Will Salesman Douglas Fairbanks Jr. from the Buenos Aires fortnightly radio and film review, Sintonia, long known as friendly to the U.S. Good Willman Fairbanks had long since left Argentina, returned to the U.S., reported to his President, but Sintonia's letter still made plenty of good sense as a lesson in good neighborliness. Excerpts:

"How do you do, Mr. Fairbanks?

"We are compelled to greet you in English, Mr. Fairbanks, since we want to be nice to you and should we greet you in Spanish you wouldn't understand us. ...

"You arrive in Buenos Aires and drink your 'good neighbor' whiskey in a friendly atmosphere. You visit our capital city, and you return to the White House to tell Mr. Roosevelt:

" 'Dear Mr. President. The Argentines like us very much, but they get angry because we send them pictures of sophisticated gauchos. As for the rest, all is well."

"And you will have told the first magistrate of your country the truth, but not all of it.

"Out of every ten Argentines, nine of us admire your country and its great pilot, Mr. Roosevelt. We wish to cooperate enthusiastically in a great effort toward continental unity.

"But we refuse to accept all the forced machinery of a rediscovery of Latin America and of putting the formidable technical and financial power of the American movies, the radio and the press at the service of a sudden continental conquest.

"When the American moving-picture industry makes good films with an Argentine background, with Argentine themes and actors, it will have truly shown its real love for Argentina . . . but it will have shaken the Argentine moving-picture industry.

"When the short-wave broadcasts of NBC and CBS ... are put in the hands of qualified Argentine announcers . . . heaven help the Argentine radio industry!

"When more publications . . . appear with Yankee publicity, then good-by to the widely heralded solvency of our national press!

"We would prefer the exchange to be an authentic one: that is to say that you should send us magnificent films in Engish, as you have done until recently, and that we should send you good Argentine films, that you would generously show in Radio City.

"We would prefer that, instead of buying time in our broadcasting stations . . . you give us American programs. . . .

"Go back to your great and beautiful country with the feeling of the most sincere, the most gaucha Argentine friendship. But tell your President, your industrialists, your business men, your newspaper men, that Argentina wants to be a self-made nation. And tell them that we shall welcome with open arms every expression of North American culture, so long as these are expressions of North America herself. ... By the same token, we shall send to your country our own national image, shaped in the ingenuous molds of our young, but nonetheless unmistakably Argentine, culture."

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