POLAND AND ARGENTINA AT SAN FRANCISCO
BEALS, CARLETON
Poland And Argentina At San Francisco By CARLETON BEALS THE recognition of Argentina and her admission to the San Francisco conference represents a victory for democratic action in foreign...
...Although pictured as menacing its neighbors, it has followed for the most part an extremely conciliatory policy...
...In short, that the powerful nations, flushed with victory, will, as President Truman set forth, attempt to serve, not to rule and abuse smaller nations and dictate their political systems or their way of life...
...At San Francisco the Soviet Union was appeased by getting 3 seats in the General Assembly in contrast to the one held by the United States...
...She did not fully satisfy us in the suppression of Axis propaganda, although more was done than in Bolivia and Chile and several other countries which actually did declare war on the Axis at an earlier date...
...Will we now coerce the Soviet Union as we coerced Argentina...
...And this has been the chief cause of the cry against admitting Argentina to San Francisco, The present colonel's regime is not democratic, although of late it has tended somewhat more in that direction than some other Latin American governments...
...The Argentine government has done more than almost any other country in the world to break down trade barriers with other South American countries...
...The case against Argentina has rested on 3 main assumptions: that it has remained neutral, that it had violated Pan-American agreements, that the government is Fascist...
...The whole problem is far more complicated than punishing one bad boy in the class...
...Stettinius and the American delegation are to be congratulated on getting our country out of a silly international jam brought about by a combination of unfortunate circumstances...
...Russia, with respect to the war with Japan, is not an ally, only a neutral...
...Argentina more than lived up to her Pan-American commitments in nearly every respect...
...In wartime neutrals are not loved by warring nations...
...However, Argentina's neutrality did not constitute a violation of any Pan-American agreement, however much out of step she may have been with her sister republics...
...Is Argentina Fascist...
...On the whole Argentina today is less Fascistic and less brutal than the governments of Paraguay, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras, or Salvador...
...but not even international relief officials may 'enter Poland...
...The labor movement is of little importance except in Buenos Aires...
...But we don't like Fascism...
...Argentina cooperated in trying to supply needed materials, it manufactured munitions for Great Britain...
...but no American newspaper man is even allowed in "free" Poland...
...The admission of the Lublinite clique to San Francisco would be a definite blow at democratic international principles...
...And the country has a tradition of 75 years of unbroken peace of which it is justly proud...
...His activities were bringing about a general breakdown of the inter-American system and the Good Neighbor policy, and that policy, therefore, has been considerably strengthened by a return to the signed agreements and recognized methods laid down previously in joint conferences...
...They were thrown over, not with the consent of the 21 republics, but by high-handed unilateral action by former Secretary of State Cordell Hull...
...No bar—except by individual countries—has been put upon the high-powered propaganda drive being staged right now throughout Latin America by the Soviet government...
...To have singled out Argentina for attack seems highly unjustified, and doubly so since we have given such lavish aid to totalitarian Brazil...
...It has been attempting to gain control of all foreign-owned utilities...
...That, I aver, regardless of the nature of the Argentine regime, is a manifestation of democratic procedure in foreign relations...
...Americans are not forbidden to travel in Argentina...
...The Democratic Way American newspaper men have had their trials in Argentina, as they have had in Rio and in Paris...
...The problem of free governments in the Americas cannot be solved on any such unfair basis or by single-handed, outside coercion by us...
...This seemingly plausible argument does not hold water at all...
...and in actuality mostly by an occupying army...
...It has been highly gratifying, therefore, that we have at last come to abide by the agreements that we ourselves helped to establish...
...Poland And Argentina At San Francisco By CARLETON BEALS THE recognition of Argentina and her admission to the San Francisco conference represents a victory for democratic action in foreign affairs...
...According to Pan-'American agreements now in effect, and which we have formally approved, the nature of Argentina's government should not bar her from either recognition or from international participation...
...It is far better that we live up to our international agreements as we have just done...
...In any event, Pan-American agreements stipulated quite definitely that the declaration of war was to be wholly voluntary by any given nation, and in actuality no proper conference was ever held regarding the matter...
...Whenever aggression occurred, it was agreed that the nations would meet and decide upon the proper action to be taken...
...It would take a great stretch of the imagination to call the governments of Peru or Bolivia, Haiti, or Panama democratic...
...but the United States cannot present its case to the Polish people or even to the Russian people...
...However, the Soviet Union attempted to collect twice by exchanging Argentina's admission for that of Poland...
...Molotoff argued that the brave Poles, who suffered and fought, were being denied admission, whereas "Fascist" Argentina was admitted...
...we don't like dictatorships...
...it has done much to salvage the disintegrating inter-American system...
...The middle-class in Argentina is weak and the major share of it merely a part of each successive bureaucracy...
...For the Lublin government, hand-picked by Moscow, Communist-controlled, does not represent the Poles who fought and bled...
...This opinion runs quite counter to prevailing liberal thought, which has been confused by the spectacle of Argentina's persistent neutrality, by the false anti-Argentine propaganda instigated by the State Department itself, by too hysterical acceptance of the smear word "Fascist...
...and American military missions were permitted to remain on Argentine soil...
...The admission of Argentina represents the opposite...
...And let us give the devil his due...
...We come to the charge of Fascism...
...Whatever the grave defects of the present Argentine government, it is strictly of Argentine origin...
...This put a false emphasis upon the whole procedure...
...It is rather to be hoped that the yardstick of wartime expedience will be fully abandoned in the work of the San Francisco conference and afterwards...
...It does not represent the brave Polish underground, so shamelessly betrayed at every juncture...
...The present regime is based on a palace coup of under-officers, and it represents a functioning balance ©f power among the following strong forces: 1) The cattle and wheat barons, 2) the new Argentine industrialists, 3) British financial imperialism, 4) the Roman Catholic hierarchy...
...We do not find it difficult to finance and otherwise aid Franco of Spain...
...or exiles, or Poles fighting on other fronts, or the larger political parties of Poland...
...The Case Against Argentina In the case of Argentina, which has rarely been treated honorably by us, these basic Pan-American principles were thrown overboard by the United States Government...
...Here we behold the bitter irony of a war started precisely to defend the freedom and the territorial boundaries of Poland, all guaranteed by solemn Soviet, British, and French treaties, a war ending with the country dismembered, by its saviors disposed of like a sack of potatoes, with no voice whatsoever in its own fate, with no representatives in international councils, its fate determined behind the screen of the obscure secret diplomacy of 3 men...
...Only a far-reaching bloody revolution could shake down the Argentine governing system, and the popular elements for any such undertaking simply do not exist...
...Now, to justify the title of this article...
...that all nations be included, that the effort to curb imperialism and to free colonial nations be pushed, that national independence be respected, that sound principles of international law gain ascendancy over mere ward-heel horse-trading...
...Actually, if any violation was involved, it was by those countries which declared war on the Axis prior to hemispheric consultation...
...It was never imposed on the Argentine people by a victorious outside army, coming with false slogans of liberation...
...The new governments of Guatemala and Ecuador have been born of recent military coups...
...In short, the puppet Lublin government is being imposed on Poland by foreign bayonets...
...The present government has alternately coerced and conciliated labor, and in general, it has forced employers to raise wages considerably...
...and it has promoted good will with our neighbors.' The only unfortunate aspect of Argentina's return to the fold was the condition laid down—that she declare war on the Axis...
...The Good Neighbor policy as built up in the conferences of Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Lima, Panama, Havana, and Rio, was based on outlawry of armed intervention, non-meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, abandonment of the weapon of non-recognition to coerce another government, the solution of all international difficulties by joint agreement in conference...
...we don't like totalitarian regimes, although we are firmly allied with many such...
...At San Francisco all neutrals were barred...
...It was reported this was done as a horse-trade for the admission of Argentina...
...Will we now apply this same yardstick during our war with Japan...
...Actually, of course, it had been we ourselves and not Argentina, who had abandoned the legal paths of Pan-American ism...
...Both Argentina and the United States bowed to the desires of the 19 other republics of the hemisphere...
...It does not represent Poles banished to Siberia, or to Soviet concentration camps...
...The United States was granted special shipping privileges, right of armed vessels to use Argentine ports...
...Thus the present regime is not far different from those which have governed Argentina for a century and more, which previously we found no difficulty, in recognizing...
...Herein lies one basic difference between the 2 cases...
...Although Argentina remained neutral, it was a benevolent neutrality greatly favoring the United Nations at the expense of the Axis...
Vol. 9 • June 1945 • No. 23
