TWO JOURNEYS INTO SOUTH AMERICA

...He does not note the equally pertinent fact that they very much dislike to have foreigners agree with them...

...Waldo Frank is a different sort of writer altogether...

...Frank to travel all over the country to give lectures strongly criticizing the government...

...Between them they have written about a score of books in this field, and they share the distinction of being hated by most of those Latin Americans whose dislike is an accolade...

...However (or perhaps therefore), he is extremely popular in South America, and the trip described in this book was undertaken at the urging of Argentine friends for the purpose of helping to persuade Argentina to enter the war against the Axis...

...A refusal to face basic, if unpleasant and inconvenient, facts is perhaps not surprising in our State Department, but it is disappointing in a writer—pardon me, artist—who professes to love and understand Argentina...

...the support given to dictatorial governments by armaments...

...He is one of the few writers who has a grasp of economic conditions in Latin America, and he has been in the past a voice, albeit often a shrill and sometimes an almost fanatical one, crying out in the wilderness against economic exploitation and foreign imperialisms...

...he has to all intents and purposes written just another travel book...

...ourselves, what fools we are, that it is hard to realize that such a process is unusual in Latin America...

...Frank "persona non grata" and sped him out of the country...

...It is, therefore, instructive and somewhat appalling to read what they have to say at a time when the necessity of understanding and getting along with Latin America is a military as well as a political imperative...

...Beals can stand up with the best of them in describing Andean sunrises, he could, if he would, do very much better than that...

...Reviewed by Katherine Rodell CARLETON BEALS and Waldo Frank are two of our best-known writers on Latin America...

...the rising nationalistic feeling brought on by the necessity of looking inward for manufactured goods once purchased abroad...

...In this book there are only traces of the old Beals...

...I am afraid that my own adjective would be "lazy...

...Admittedly the Argentine problem is one of the thorniest we have to grapple with in our foreign relations, but it can not be solved by the old "you're either for us or against us" sophistry...

...In urging Argentina to enter the war on the side of the angels Mr...

...Frank chose to ignore these reasons, even as do our policy makers...

...And the Argentines are a proud people...

...He barely touches on the vitally important problems of Latin America today—the effect of Lend-Lease in intensifying one-crop economies and strengthening and increasing large landholdings, particularly in the Caribbean area...

...His prose style can only be described as lush, and he refers frequently to himself as an artist...

...Frank was set upon in his apartment by a gang of young men and badly beaten up...

...how, after the appearance of this article, Mr...

...Some reviewers have interpreted this last book as indicating that he has become more "mellow...

...Frank published in the Buenos Aires newspapers his Farewell to Argentina, in which he said that because Argentina did not take its "place of dignity" in the war against fascism it occupied a place of "humiliation, ambiguity and weakness...

...Frank took the good old liberal position that this is a world revolution, with the powers of light and darkness neatly arrayed on opposite sides...

...It is quite possibly true that this extraordinary action of the Argentine government was due to Nazi pressure...

...He is one of those biceps-flexing litterateurs who seem to believe that to understand a country you must spend a good deal of time making love to the beautiful high-breasted native girls and subsequently describing it all in print...

...the unceasing British struggle to retain trade advantages over us, especially in Argentina...

...Frank correctly notes that one of their surprising characteristics is an eagerness to discuss their own shortcomings...

...And while Mr...

...There are deep rooted economic and psychological reasons for this attitude on the part of many Argentines, but Mr...

...We are so accustomed in this country to having foreign lecturers come and tell us, at considerable expense to...

...The story is as well known as it is shocking: how Mr...

...And the unsup-pressable scandal of India, our toadying to Franco, our squabbles with the Free French, and our maneuvers with Badoglio have done little to shake their belief that the war is essentially another imperialistic struggle in which there is no particular reason for them to get involved...

...In all fairness, however, it must be said that the Castillo regime, which if not an actual dictatorship was about as representative as are our poll-tax Senators, had permitted Mr...

...A great many thoughtful Argentines (as distinct from the government) persist in questioning this simplification without being in the least pro-Nazi...

...how the government not only made no effort to apprehend the thugs, but declared Mr...

...Of the two books, that by Carleton Beals is perhaps the more disappointing, simply because it falls so far short of what it is reasonable to expect of him...

...Beals understands and can elucidate these things better than most writers on the subject, and although in the past he was often intemperate, he was always stimulating...

...He is inclined to scorn the economic condition of a country and to look for its soul...

...Frank emerged from Argentina a gloriously bandaged hero with a broken head...

...This time, instead of interpretation he has given us description...