GOVERNMENT BY GENERALS

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24152, 11 January 1944, Page 3

GOVERNMENT BY GENERALS

Authoritarian State In Argentina

RELATIONS WITH ALLIES AND THE AXIS LONDON, November 15. Argentina’s friends in this country look with puzzled misgiving up<in the developments following the military coup which established the Ramirez Government, says the diplomatic correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian." Nobody can say with any certainty how long the Ramirez Government will last. . A military administration, if it has sufficient force behind it, may hold on to the reins of power for a long time. But its basis is armed soldie~ ' i not the popular will. It shirks recourse to constitutional machinery which provides for elections already long overdue. It is perhaps logical in this, since democratic machinery cannot function under military threat. And when it pretends to do so it is by fraud. If there was any substantial body of opinion in Argentina that believed that the Army was the body to end the anti-democratic practices, the corruption. and the ill-conducted foreign policy of the late Castillo regime, it is now completely disabused. The Castillo regime was rejected by the bulk of Argentine opinion and by all democrats. But the dictatorship of a group of generals, behind whom are a body of colonels, politically still more primitive, is proceeding to excesses which make democrats regret the Castillo regime, which now seems virtuous and .enlightened in retrospect. What has happened in Argentina in the last few months? The Ramirez Government has shed its only eminent civilian member, Senor Santamarina, the Minister of Finance, upon whom the hopes of democratic opinion at first centred. His presence in the Ramirez Government seemed at least a guarantee that it contemplated abiding by the Constitution and holding elections. Another general, appears to be mole powerful even than Ramirez. General Farrell and the Minister of the Interior (key post in a dictatorship). General Gilbert assisted by Colonel Peron, Under-Secretary for War. and Colonel Ramirez, the Chief of Police, are the real governors of Argentina. Another strange figure is Senor Zuviria, the new Minister of Justice. He is better known as Hugo Wast, the writer, and is Argentina’s leading anti-Semite. Gestapo Established

This regime has fettered the press and public opinion, has discharged State servants for their opinions and recalled diplomatists, has introduced anti-Semitic measures, is “eradicating Communism’’ by police measures, has set up a Gestapo, and is ruling in defiance of public opinion generally. The leading newsnapers, such as “La Nacion" and “Prensa," both extremely sober organs of a high journalistic level, recently published a manifesto signed by 150 prominent Argentines demanding a return to democratic government and the honouring by Argentina of its Pan-American undertakings. The Government’s reply was to discharge all the signatories holding civil posts. The universities are likewise being purged of critics of the Government. Dr. Palacio, the Rector of La Plata University, made a dignified' reply to the Government: he said that he had sworn a constitutional oath to respect the laws of the State and statutes of the university. But he acknowledged that force was in the hands of the Government.

It seems possible that the present domestic policy of the Ramirez Government may produce what is called a civil strike —that is, a strike by the bureaucracy and the professions, as distinct from artisan and labourer. A strike of this kind brought down the personal dictatorship of President Allessandri in Chile. But it cannot lightly be assumed that military power can be broken by passive weapons, and there seems to be no military opposition to the present group. Nevertheless the failures of the Ramirez regime may come to produce military dissensions.

The Argentine Government declares that it is not pro-Axis. On the contrary, it is pointed out, Argentina is pro-Allied not merely in sentiment, but in Government action. Argentine ports are open to Allied warships, but closed to German: Axis assets are frozen, the activities of Axis diplomatists are proscribed. It is ’-ointed out. too. that Argentina is not the only country among the friends of the Allies which suppresses public opinion or is authoritarian. The Ramirez Government annarently thought it could get arms from the United States by friendly co-operation short of fulfilling its obligation to break with the Axis Mr Cordell Hull coupled a blunt refusal with a moral castigation, which came as a shock to the Ramirez Government. It dismissed Admiral Storni and made the Minister of the Interior Acting-Foreign Minister in his place. But this incident brings the Ramirez Government no nearer to a breach with what was the Axis and is now Germany Further, the Ramirez Government has got a firm grip upon partisans of full co-operation with the Allies and has expelled their sympathisers from the Cabinet. In foreign as in home policy the Ramirez Government is bankrupt.