A Hoosier in Chile
ALEXANDER, ROBERT J.
A Hoosier in Chile Chile Through Embassy Windows. By Claude G. Bowers. Simon & Schuster. 375 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by Robert J. Alexander This book is delightful, as was the engaging little man...
...It is not critical...
...The Republicans had the good grace to keep him on a few months after they took office, so that he would be able to complete twenty years in the diplomatic service and thus be eligible for a pension...
...Claude Bowers, after six years as U.S...
...Anyone who knew Claude Bowers, five feet tall with beady, twinkling eyes and an inevitable cigar, cannot help but like this book...
...This book is varied...
...His only doubts were about some of the Axis diplomats during the war and the Communists after it...
...He devotes a whole chapter to Arturo Alessandri, three times President of Chile and probably the most important political figure which that country has produced in the 20th century...
...Anyone interested in Latin America will learn something...
...Anyone who enjoys reading a light but serious book will get pleasure from this one...
...Some parts read like a particularly good travelogue, as Bowers talks about his peregrinations the length and breadth of the Chilean Republic...
...He stayed at that post for the astounding period of fourteen years, until the election of Eisenhower...
...Other parts discuss the ambassador's complicated negotiations during the Second World War designed to get Chile lined up with the Allies...
...Reviewed by Robert J. Alexander This book is delightful, as was the engaging little man who wrote it...
...Reminiscences by an old man of a period which must have been one of the happiest in his career, it is informative, interesting, and very readable...
...Ambassador to Spain, was named this country's envoy to Chile in 1939...
...There are interesting sidelights concerning Bowers's relations with President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull, as well as engaging assessments of various leading Chilean political figures during Bowers's period as ambassador...
...The author emphasizes again and again that Chile's neutrality throughout a large part of the war should not be interpreted as hostility toward the United Nations, but rather as a process similar to that which took place in the United States before Pearl Harbor...
...But there were apparently many things which Bowers did not see: the poverty in which the majority of the people live, the slums which are a blot on Santiago and other Chilean cities and towns, the illiteracy which still plagues the country despite its excellent school system...
...Judging from this book, Bowers liked virtually everything he saw in Chile and almost everyone with whom he came in contact...
Vol. 41 • May 1958 • No. 19
