Salazar’s Views Assessed

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32361, 29 July 1970, Page 22

Salazar’s Views Assessed

(By TAD SZVLC. of the New York Times News Service, through N-Z.P.A.) NEW YORK, July 27. In March, 1966, this correspondent sat for three hours with Dr Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in the turn-of-the-century sitting room of the Portuguese Prime Minister’s private residence in Lisbon. The off-the-record conversation, held during this writer’s three-year assignment in Portugal and Spain, came after the delivery of Dr Salazar’s written answers to a list of written questions and was more revealing of the man than any public statement he had ever made or any of his numerous and rather stilted writings. Already in his late 70s, Dr Salazar showed himself to be a man extraordinarily well informed on world affairs and firmly opinionated about them. 19th Century Thinking But the intriguing aspect of this brilliantly-developed intellect was that it led Dr Salazar to appreciate and assess current events through a prism of nineteenth century thinking, and this, precisely, was the overwhelming theme of his rule over Portugal in the last four decades. Thus, Dr Salazar felt that the emancipation of former European colonies in Africa

was a colossal error by “misguided" post-war _ liberals, and he hold the United States chiefly responsible for this state of affairs. Listening to him, one could not doubt his sincerity in believing that the white man—and, in this case, the Portuguese man—still held the burden of bringing Africa toward a remote maturity.

In practical application, and the corollary of this conviction, was Portugal's desperate and determined de-, fence of Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea against national rebels. Portuguese propaganda insisted that these territories were not colonies but “overseas provinces" of metropolis tan Portugal. Dr Salazar in his own curious paternal way, believed that they were just that and that it was Portugal's duty to preserve them. N.A.T.O. Member A member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Portugal held a most peculiar concept of this alliance. Because Dr Salazar, the oldfashioned man, held an oldfashioned notion of national honour, he had granted United States bases in the Azores at the end of World War n as an extension of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, the oldest surviving international alliance in the world. Mr John Wiley, the late United States Ambassador to Portugal, who negotiated the bases agreement, recalled that Dr Salazar insisted at the time that his Government

wished for no military aid and would accept none from the United States in exchange for the bases. This has always been true of Dr Salazar's policies even though Portugal’s relations with both Britain and the United States had degenerated, in time, to an unprecedented low level. Though the bases agreement with the United States expired in 1961 and Portugal refused to renegotiate it, the American Army, Navy and Air Force still remain on the Azores under a continuing "gentlemen's agreement” Talking to this correspondent four years ago, Dr Salazar did not attempt to hide his contempt of United States and British policies in Africa and the refusal to allow his country to obtain arms to fight the African war.

He felt that the United States, Britain and all of N.A.T.O. were underestimating what he called “the Communist danger” in the world. He said that the Western democracies—and he pronounced these words with sarcasm—were being taken in by nations that coexistence with the Soviet Union was possible. Internally, Dr Salazar's policies were likewise based on political conservatism including a pervasive anticommunism—and on his obsession with sound money, as presumably befitted this onetime professor of economics. In the political sense, Dr Salazar ran a stern dictator-

ship conducted on a day-to-day basis by his secret police. Opposition, dissent, and criticism were simply not tolerated. The bleak island of Sao Tome, off the African coast, and the metropolitan prisons became the homes of Dr Salazar’s foes. Dr Salazar was an anachronism but, personally, be was not an evil man. He was caught in the web of dictatorship he had created, and he was both its manager and Its prisoner. A man of simple tastes, he was incorruptible. But he tolerated an extraordinary degree of corruption round him in the highest circles of his Government.