Bully & the Beef

When the Andes Agreement, Argentina's one-year contract to sell meat to Britain, ran out last week, President Juan Peron sent a brisk, brusque message to Britain. Until a new agreement was reached, he said, Argentina would ship Britain no more than 10,000 tons of beef a month, less than a third of the recent rate of delivery. Furthermore, it would do that only at a price to be set in a new agreement--and Argentina had so far held out for a boost of around 100%.

Neither side showed any disposition to give in. The British were angry because Argentina had failed to deliver 73,000 of the 400,000 tons of meat promised them last year. The Argentines hotly insisted that they had lost more than $60,000,000 on 1948-5 contract.

For the British, Allan M. Laing summed up in London's New Statesman & Nation:

We cannot love the Argentine as fully As once we did, which is a theme for

grief; For, though we don't mind buying beef

that's bully, The bully mustn't come before the beef.

With negotiations stalled, diplomatic sources in Buenos Aires had a chillingly cynical explanation for Argentina's apparent unconcern. The government, these sources said, had become convinced that World War III was sure to break out in a few weeks or months, especially after the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty; the Argentines were just waiting for the big boom to come along and jump the price of beef over the moon.

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