Slaps-in-the-Face

Millions of Mexicans honestly believe their Government's expropriation of $400,000,000 worth of U. S. and British oil properties is approved in the White House as a justified crackdown upon Capitalist gringos. Britons do not take so easy a view of the matter, and suddenly last week the British Government sent a third note of stern protest. London papers called Mexican President General Lazaro Cardenas a "bandit." After hours of rapidly worsening relations, the envoy of Mexico in London and the envoy of Britain in Mexico City were withdrawn by their respective Governments, together with their whole staffs, except for a diplomatic caretaker who was left behind in each case.

This meant that the Roosevelt good neighbor policy at last faces a severe test --and one brought to a crux by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Under the Monroe Doctrine it is not permissible for Britain to intervene with arms and protect her interests in Latin America, but the same doctrine also carries an implied obligation that the U. S. must keep Latin Americans from doing anything that might be considered provocative by Europeans. Thus if Honduras should order every Lithuanian within its borders decapitated, Lithuania would expect, while keeping the Lithuanian Navy at home, that the U. S. Navy & Marines would avert this outrage.

At latest reports Good Neighbor Roosevelt had not yet revealed this week what, if anything, the U. S. Government will do about the outrage which British owners of oil properties in Mexico have suffered in the opinion of His Majesty's Government. Meanwhile, British Ambassador to Mexico Owen St. Clair O'Malley was sent packing with two calculated slaps-in-the-face from the Government of President Cardenas: 1) He was reminded by the Mexican Foreign Office that the United Kingdom has welshed on her War Debt. Wrote Foreign Minister General Eduardo Hay: "The government of Your Excellency lacks all right to analyze the domestic situation of Mexico. . . . Even powerful states having at their command abundant resources cannot pride themselves on being up to date in the payment of all their monetary obligations." 2) He was handed a check for $82,475 in payment for damages Britons suffered in revolutions in Mexico between 1910 and 1920.

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