Conference Curtain Raiser

The huge circular salon that had been the Quitandinha Hotel's nightclub was draped in dark green and salmon pink. Brazilian bigwigs and tourists up from Rio crowded against the walls. Around the grey-covered horseshoe table in front of the speaker's platform, delegates to the Rio Conference fidgeted restlessly in yellow leather chairs. It was cold in the vast hotel on the mountains at Petropolis, 40-odd miles north of Rio. Furthermore, the President of Brazil was late.

At 25 minutes past the scheduled hour, chunky Eurico Caspar Dutra, flanked by the conference chairman, Brazil's Foreign Minister Raul Fernandes (TiME, Aug. 4), inarched into the room. His opening address was short and dull. The President read it without a flicker of emphasis, shifting his pages from left hand to right as he finished with them. Delegates applauded politely.

More Than Defense. Then Mexico's Foreign Minister, Poet-Educator Jaime Torres Bodet, rose and replied with a rattling speech that hauled out the conference's hottest issue.

"Joint defense is a commitment of the highest solemnity," cried Bodet. "But solemn as that commitment may be, that of constant mutual help should be equally solemn, in order to strengthen the defensive capacity of the hemisphere. Mexico considers that one of the deepest yearnings of the continent is to develop the economic cooperation of our countries to the end that many of them shall not become simply armored invalids artificially ironclad in time of emergency, but rather communities that are strong through production, sound through equitable exploitation of their resources. Nations that are weak owing to their economy will be unable to exercise rapid and decisive action against aggression."

Bodet was cheered from the time he ended until he had walked three-quarters of the way around the room to his seat between Bolivia and Haiti. He had said what practically every Latin delegate had on his mind. While the Rio Conference's top subject was joint defense of the hemisphere, the Latin republics, harassed by inflation and meager dollar reserves, were much more eager to talk about economics.

Aid from the U.S. The U.S. is hardly less interested in the subject than the Latins themselves. Since 1942, the U.S. has sent south $796 million in Lend-Lease and Export-Import Bank loans; Latin America is peppered with U.S. technicians lent to help the other republics strengthen their economies. So Secretary of State George Marshall understood that Bodet spoke sound doctrine in his conference speech. But the U.S. wanted a defense treaty first. It would then be willing and ready to tackle economic problems at the Bogota conference next January. The U.S. view seemed likely to-prevail. At week's end Bodet himself urged that the whole subject of economics be put aside until Bogota.

The sort of defense treaty the U.S. wants was outlined by Secretary Marshall on the conference's first day. If one of the 21 American republics were attacked, all of them would go into a huddle, and if two-thirds of them agreed to crack down on the aggressor, all 21 would have to go along. Nobody could be neutral. On the other hand, only those that wanted to need start shooting. For those unable or unwilling to go that far there would be lesser steps--breaking off diplomatic relations, starting an economic blockade, for instance.

This was a switch in the U.S. stand, and in line with the wartime Chapultepec agreement, which lined up all the republics against a common aggressor. When the 21 republics first began to swap ideas on a treaty for Rio, the U.S. had drawn back from Chapultepec. It had favored committing only those nations voting in a two-thirds majority for a crackdown on the aggressor. Dissenters would have been excused. Now Marshall, by leaving up to the individual nation the question of making war with guns, had made a conciliatory gesture to those Latin American republics that might be reluctant to be tied by an all-out commitment.

Last Best Hope. The conference was off to a good start. In addition to the major issues, delegates had started to think of the irritating problems of Nicaragua. They moved to mediate the Paraguayan civil war, which unless they moved fast might be over. In their first sessions they had no time for Cuba's proposal to define "economic aggression," but it would be considered before adjournment.

Not all the delegates had their minds full-time on matters of state. Some were deeply concerned with Quitandinha's gouging prices. Cried U.S. Congressman Sol Bloom: "You can drink ten of those little cups of coffee free, but when you ask for a larger cup and milk, you pay 40-c- for the milk. This is too brazen. When I am gypped, I want to be gypped by experts, not robbers!"

Argentine delegates sported Peronist emblems, sometimes in both lapels. Overnight, Rio's streets were splashed with 10,000 huge yellow posters of Eva Peron. But the cops pulled down the pictures the night before Evita arrived from Europe. Said the Diario da Noite impolitely: "Brazilians know how to treat beautiful charmers."

At week's end the delegates ducked wintry Petropolis for Rio's beaches. Delegates and visitors who had watched the opening show went away with the feeling that in the fantastic ex-gambling casino at Quitandinha, the men of the Americas might succeed where the men of Europe had failed.

Said one observer: "If all those European conferences had succeeded, this one wouldn't amount to much. But they have failed. Maybe you think this conference won't be exciting, but it will be--it's almost our last hope."

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