Chile's Week of Destiny

The military band played a snappy march at Los Cerrillos airport. The crowd broke into cheers. A plane taxied up to the line of waiting dignitaries--Cabinet members, Government officials, foreign Ambassadors. Out of it stepped Dr. Raul Morales Beltrami, Chilean Minister of the Interior, home from a month's journey to the U.S.

Thus did Chile last week approach the climax of its long drift toward rupture with the Axis. Dr. Morales had conferred with the U.S., had spent three days consulting Chile's neighbor Government, Argentina, its last partner in neutrality. Now he would tell the Cabinet what he had learned. Then Foreign Minister Joaquin Fernandez Fernandez would report to the Chilean Senate, asking advice on future foreign policy. Finally a choice, so long deferred, would be made: either neutrality apart from the United Nations, or a diplomatic break with the Axis.

A rupture with the Axis, as President Juan Antonio Rios told his country last November, would be tantamount to declaring war and would mean real sacrifices for the nation's already hard-pressed economy. In Washington Dr. Morales had mentioned Chile's vulnerable, 2,800-mile long coastline, the danger to her lifeline of ships, the political difficulties arising out of her large colonies of Germans.

Chileans did not know what aid--if any --they might expect from the U.S. Their President had told them that the country's honor would not permit Chile to ask for military assistance. So they looked forward to a period of suffering if they entered the war. But the Government was prepared. President Rios last week signed the External Security Bill, which gave him full powers to break relations with the Axis. Almost the equivalent of a state of siege, the law, if invoked, would permit him to clamp down on all Axis nationals.

In Buenos Aires and Santiago there were insistent rumors that President Rios was attempting to obtain joint action from stubborn Ramon S. Castillo's Argentine Government. In the Argentine capital observers noted signs that Castillo was planning a hasty trip to Santiago. That might also mean a last Argentine effort to keep Chile on the path of Argentina's "prudent neutrality." The issue was plain. At the Senate's session this week, Chile would have to choose.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.