A Pistol for Panchito

THE HEMISPHERE

Lend-Lease to Latin America, interrupted by war's end, would dry up officially on July 1. Should the U.S. continue to arm the hemisphere?

Yes, said the State Department's Jimmy Byrnes, War's General Dwight Eisenhower and Navy's Admiral Chester Nimitz. They asked Congress for permission to train the Latin Americans in U.S. military dogma and arm them with U.S. guns, ships and planes. They want the hemisphere (Canada could come in, too, if it liked) equipped with interchangeable weapons and trained in a common technique.

Should the shiny new playthings go to the recalcitrant Argentines? War and Navy seemed to think so. State's Assistant Secretary Spruille Braden wondered why the rush. Why not let the Argentines first deNazify themselves, as they had promised at Chapultepec and at the U.N. meeting in San Francisco?

But the British were already selling aircraft to the Argentines, and any day now the Russians might be trading Czech guns for Argentine hides. In a little while Peron & Co. might not need U.S. help; right now they were definitely interested.

In Washington last week to sell Argentina's case was Peron's special representative, General Carlos von der Becke. The Argentine ex-Chief of Staff, who had backed the Nazis to win World War II, now asked for U.S. arms to bring Argentina's fighting strength up to that of Lend-Leased Brazil. (His admiration for U.S. weapons was not so cynical as some supposed; the effectiveness of U.S. planes and tanks had startled him out of his pre-D-day conviction that "Europe never could be invaded.") General Eisenhower received Von der Becke courteously, looked over his list of materiel requests, then said that the decision rested with the State Department.

Democracy for Defense. However much the U.S. disclaimed any intention of starting an arms race south of the border, many a sincere Latin American democrat was worried by the prospect of more pistols for Panchito. "The intentions, as almost invariably, are sterling. The effects, deplorable," said one thoughtful Latin American last week. "You equip a dictator's army to modern standards and you provide the dictator with an unfailing instrument to perpetuate his tyranny. Do the same in a fledgling Latin American democracy, and you strengthen the already heady military caste.

"Sending tanks to Latin America is not a very serious contribution to hemispheric defense. The tanks only become obsolete. However, build highways, dams, power plants and you produce, as a byproduct, mechanics. In an international emergency a modern mechanized army can be organized from those mechanics far more efficiently than from drilled soldiers who have not yet developed the mentality of a mechanical age. And highways and dams bolster a democracy instead of undermining it."

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