The Axis & The Hemisphere

Two propaganda blows by the Axis last week rang through Latin America: Circular Letter. Spain's Generalissimo Francisco Franco, in a letter sent to all Latin American governments, told how Spain had joined Adolf Hitler's crusade against Communism: 90,000 Spaniards had enlisted in the German crusade, which was continuing to recruit "youths who will go forth to defend Occidental Christian civilization."

As a bid for the support of Catholics in Latin America, Caudillo Franco's letter came a little late, for the Vatican had pointedly withheld its blessing from the war (TIME, July 14). In Costa Rica, where the letter was first released to the public, the reaction of the press was one of sympathy, not with Franco, but with Spaniards forced to fight for Hitler. It looked as if Hitler had done himself no good in talking in the voice of Spain.

Yankee Imperialism. For another more effective piece of propaganda the Axis did not have to take any official responsibility. Its agents quietly called the attention of Latin Americans to an interview reeled off in Washington last week by Senator David Worth Clark of Idaho. Blowhard Senator Clark irresponsibly suggested that the U.S. should take full possession of the Western Hemisphere, including Canada. "We could make some kind of arrangement to set up puppet governments which we could trust to put American interests ahead of those of Germany or any other nation in the world."

That Strong Man Clark was speaking only for himself was obvious to everyone in the U.S., but U.S. officials worried themselves sick over the effect of his remarks in the other American republics. Official reaction from the south was to ignore the loud wind, but how often the interview would be quoted by Axis agents and how much ill will it might breed, no man could calculate.

Other skirmishes in the underground battle for the Hemisphere: ^ To the Government of Mexico, Germany sent a politely threatening note, suggesting that Mexico "reject" the new U.S. export ban on business houses giving financial support to the Nazis. Mexico's Foreign Minister Ezequiel Padilla bluntly retorted that the note was "imperious and unacceptable."

^ After the Nazis had arrested several Bolivians in Germany in reprisal for Bolivia's prompt squashing of an attempted Nazi-led coup in Bolivia (TIME, July 28) Bolivia's Foreign Minister Alberto Ostria Gutierrez warned that his country could play the same game, that there were 5,000 German nationals in Bolivia.

^ Peru announced that German diplomatic pouches would no longer be exempt from customs examination, since Nazi officials had used them "for purposes other than the transport of official correspondence." One of the other purposes had been to send a radio transmitter to the German Legation in Lima. When Peruvian customs officials refused to pass the transmitter unopened it was sent back to Argentina. There it was seized, with other German diplomatic correspondence, by the eager sleuthhounds of the Argentine "Comite Dies." Last week, after much diplomatic fussing, the Germans got the transmitter and most of their documents back, but received no apology from the Argentine Government.

> On the grounds that the Argentine Constitution called for free trade, Argentina refused to approve the U.S. black list of Nazi-affiliated business houses. Same day the Government started a crackdown on all propaganda in the mails, began rounding up members of the fascistic "Superior Council of Nationalism."

^ The Government of Colombia an nounced it had nipped a Nazi-inspired rebellion in the Army, arrested ringleaders.

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