TIES WITH SPAIN.

Evening Star, Issue 24289, 2 September 1942, Page 4

TIES WITH SPAIN.

Mr Roosevelt’s plan for encouraging Spanish ties with South America has been very vaguely expressed at its first announcement; it will be interesting to see how far he may he able to elaborate it. Spain is proud and poor—desperately poor after its civil war. Its poverty might be helped) if thousands of SpanisliAmericans, inhabiting the “ continent of the future,” could be induced to take an increasing interest in what has still a large claim to be called the Mother Country, to visit it and admire its monuments and cultural treasures. Trade would be benefited, and Spanish pride, which remembers great possessions that have been lost and can never in a controlling sense bo regained, would have its gratification, harmless to the world at large, in the leadership of a moral and cultural Empire without either aggression or coercion. Excluding Brazil, which is Portuguese, Spanish America has a population of eighty millions. Though all its countries are proud of their independence and democracy is a faith, even more than a practice with them, there are ties with the land overseas made by descent, language, and religion. The Eromotion of bonds which Mr Roosevelt as in mind wouldi depend, for a beginning at least, on American money, voluntarily subscribed, and one Spanish organisation in South America would bo required to modify its imputed ambitions. Subject to a council in Madrid, the Spanish Ealange works throughout the country almost as actively as the Nazis and Fascists. _ According to Mr John Gunther, in his ‘ Inside _ Latin America, 1 it pursues an anti-North American policy. But, without being “ anti ” to anybody, it might do much, with American co-operation, for its professed object, which is the promotion of cultural and spiritual ties with Spain, There are younger Spanish Americans, and sonic leaders, who have small interest in that country. Their indifference would need to be surmounted. The influence Mr Roosevelt has envisaged would be impossible to a Spain joined to the Axis. It should bo natural in any other circumstances.