Argentina

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24911, 26 June 1946, Page 6

Argentina

Two months ago, the United States Secretary of State. held out a friendly hand to Argentina, “ All “ will be forgiven ” as the “ Nation ” acidly paraphrased Mr Byrnes's speech—“ if the Peron “ regime behaves itself ”, It was hard, then, to believe that Colonel (now General) Peron was likely to reciprocate and to moderate his attitude in both domestic and foreign affairs accordingly. It is even harder to believe it now. Two months ago. General Peron had won the election, handsomely. In a record poll he had secured 304 of the 376 seats in the Electoral College, and his followers had won almost all the seats in the Senate and more than twothirds in the Chamber of Deputies, thus making his Government one of the strongest Argentina has known. Moreover, the poll had, it seems, been honest. In the past, the federal capital had invariably voted Radical and Socialist with a substantial Conservative minority. It was the one constituency where it was considered impossible for any party to win by unfair means; and it voted for Peron. His success was more firmly® based, ip the nation’s free choice than any but his blindest followers had thought possible. Since then he has found a new source Of strength, to which the Buenos Aires correspondent of the Associated Press pointed, this week, in his account of trade negotiations between Argentina and Soviet Russia For those negotiations are part of a wider accommodation—the resumption. early this month, of diplomatic, consular, and commercial relations between the two countries after a 29-year old estrangement. Before the elections it was one of

the chief arguments put forward by the Democratic Union that victory for Peron would isolate Argentina in the American Continent. The reverse occurred. All the LatmAmerican nations sent delegations composed of their most prominent personages to attend General Peron’s inauguration as President on June 4. To that triumph the Russians have added another. The Peronistas will hardly fail to reason that friendship with the Soviet Union can be turned to profit in their dealings with the United States; and it is a line of reasoning they are less likely to abandon if trade with Russia opens—as it well may—a market in arms closed to them in the United States, Britain, and Sweden.