FASCISM IN SOUTH AMERICA

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LX, Issue 17, 3 March 1939, Page 4

FASCISM IN SOUTH AMERICA

The speeches at the recent PanAmerican conference held at Lima show with what anxiety the operations and intrigues of Nazi and Fascist Governments in South America are watched by all those who care about preserving democratic institutions in the New World, says the Manchester Guardian. A writer in the current number of the important American quarterly Foreigrn Affairs describes the methods by which the control exercised by those authorities over Germans and Italians at home is extended to Germans and Italians in the South American States. In Brazil, Germans are herded into Nazi organisations and the Gestapo is at work. Germans who resist are boycotted and their businesses are ruined. Italian ~firms boycott nonFascist Italians and the Rome propaganda office maintains a free press j service which is hostile to the United States and democracy. Other States are treated in the same way. The writer points out that the large banking and commercial interests might

be used to interfere with the flow of supplies in the case of war. The effect of a rebel victory in Spain would be to add a new Government to the anti-Comintern group, and the pressure now applied to Germans, Italians, and Japanese in the New World would be applied to Spaniards. It is of supreme importance to the United States that the grave problem that occupies its attention at this moment should not be made still graver. The effect of a victory by Franco would be felt in ever,y State that has a Spanish population.