Lion in the Senate

Chile's Senate was in for a long spell of entertaining roars and rhetorical man-eating last week. "The Lion of Tarapaca" was back.

The Lion is thick-maned Arturo Ales-sandri, 76, Chile's most formidable orator,* and its President from 1920 to 1925 and from 1932 to 1938. Fortnight ago he was elected Senator from Talca.

Most Chileans believed that Alessandri hoped to be more than Senator. He would certainly claw and maul President Juan Antonio Rios' regime. For he had been elected in the face of all the opposition the Government could muster.

His alarmed opponents had already dreamed up a series of events that might make Alessandri President of Chile. Not wishing to take precedence over an ex-President of Chile, the president of the Senate might resign. The evenly divided Senate might then elect Alessandri to take his place. Some day harried President Rios might also resign. That would give the Minister of the Interior Presidential power. But he might not feel up to bearing "The Lion of Tarapaca. "If he resigned, Alessandri, as president of the Senate, would automatically take his place. That would practically insure Alessandri's election as President of Chile.

* Once he pointed up a rhetorical climax by releasing a flight of pigeons at the right moment.

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