What should U.S. journalism do about Peron?

Peron is a headache for Uncle Sam and a pain in the meatless stomach of the British. He is also trouble for U.S. publications like TIME.

The U.S. would like to be friends with Argentina. Argentina is a wonderful land -- with all the natural advantages needed to make a fine country, one of the most prosperous in the world.

The Argentine people, before Peron, had developed a high culture. Most of them came from European stock, and they maintained close connections with European culture. They are mostly Catholics. They had at least two of the finest newspapers in the world.

But in the present Peron epoch, it is impossible to give anything resembling a truthful account of Argentine affairs without giving offense to Peron. If you try too hard, as TIME Correspondent Frank Shea did last week in Buenos Aires, you get thrown into jail (see THE HEMISPHERE).

We might publish nothing whatever about Argentina--refraining in the interest of international friendship.

The last U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, Mr. Stanton Griffis, got along fine with Peron, whom he considered charming. Mr. Griffis admitted that "there is a lack of personal liberty in Argentina," but this concerned him little. He said that his major job was "to become loyal friends" with the Perons by building up U.S.-Argentine trade; he felt that his work at such commercial diplomacy was often fouled by TIME'S reports (none of which he called untrue) on conditions in Peronland.

Mr. Griffis is Ambassador to Franco Spain now. Perhaps he will begin to feel the same way there.

Now it happens that TIME believes that Spain ought to be included in the Atlantic Pact. Because we believe that, we might (with some logic) refrain from printing anything Franco wouldn't like.

Perhaps you will think that these are merely rhetorical questions--that we expect you, and all good Americans, to answer: "No--you must go ahead and print the truth as accurately and as clearly as you see it."

You are right. That is the only answer we can give, and we believe that it's the only answer you can or will give.

Just the same, it is important sometimes to check up on the "obvious."

Freedom is what we Americans believe in. And there is no more funda mental test of freedom than what we call free dom of speech. Americans take freedom of speech -- and of press --for granted, perhaps too much for granted.

The majority of the people of the world -- in cluding the majority of our allies in the Unit ed Nations -- just don't know what we mean in the U.S. by freedom of speech. Some think it crazy; others think it wrong.

America's No. i battle right now is to turn back the tide of Soyiet Com munism. But the fight to keep the flag of freedom flying is a bigger fight even than putting the quietus on the Kremlin.

TIME may boggle sometimes in its part of the fight. Being human, it's a cinch we will.

But we're in that fight the world over -- which includes Peron's Argen tina -- till the end of TIME.

Cordially yours,

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