Summing Up

After eight months in office, Secretary of State Dean Acheson this week made his first comprehensive statement on U.S. policy toward Latin America. To the 700 members and guests of the Pan American Society who heard his speech at Manhattan's Hotel Roosevelt, it seemed more a reiteration of long-established principles than a blueprint for a new day.

Speaking before the Pan American Society, Acheson restated the State Department's firm opposition to filibustering expeditions like those of the Caribbean Legion against Dominican Dictator Rafael Trujillo. Such plots, he noted, "have in themselves been inconsistent with our common commitments not to intervene in each other's affairs . . ." On the other hand he answered critics of the State Department's prompt recognition of military regimes in Peru and Venezuela. Recognition, he said, "need not be taken to imply approval" either of the regimes or their policies. The U.S. stands firmly for democracy and for non-intervention in its neighbors' business.

He pointed to the economic help for Latin America already going forward under the Export-Import Bank and the World Bank, but he reaffirmed the U.S. desire to see "the job ahead . . . done through private initiative." He approved the results of such U.S.-sponsored economic surveys as last winter's Abbink Mission to Brazil, and emphasized the State Department's readiness to send out others like it.

In all such programs, however, the U.S. would be guided by one underlying principle. Said Acheson, "Progress will come most rapidly to nations that help themselves vigorously."

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