Bright Surface

The splendid city of Buenos Aires was thriving, cocky, getting richer by the minute. Busy factories billowed thick, black smoke. The Calle Florida, flashier than ever, glittered with the smart new shops of refugees. Pin-striped upper-crusters gathered at 8 p.m. in the Plaza Bar, sipped the abundant Scotch, ribbed the preposterous military Government and told with detailed animation whom they slept with the night before.

Avenida Corrientes, the local Broadway, was dimmed to save electricity; locomotives eked out their coal with wood and corn-on-the-cob. Excepting such details, the war had brought nothing but boom to Buenos Aires. Legitimate businessmen prospered; well-heeled opportunists fattened. Hard-eyed Fritz Mandl, fabulous Austrian munitions magnate and former husband of Hedy Lamarr, had a new and equally beautiful wife. Hand-in-glove with the militarists, he manufactured weapons the U.S. would not supply, and kept Prince Ernst Ruediger von Starhemberg, exiled Austrian bullyboy, in a job.

Through Government buildings tramped thick-skulled Army officers. Argentines joked about their continual, puerile squabbles. But few appeared to care. Argentina, was so prosperous (through trade with the United Nations) that she hardly needed a government.

Such was the glittering surface. Beneath, the country crawled with rumors of many-hued discontent. In a wave of repression, police last week arrested conservative former Finance Minister Federico Pinedo, other prominent citizens, scores of so-called "Communists." Soldiers invaded the great Grafa textile mill, seized 500 men & women workers, let most of them go after a warning. Some Argentines thought that the militarists were heading off a popular demonstration planned for May 25, National Independence Day. But the Government gave no explanation. The surface of Argentine life went brightly smooth again.

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