OFFSIDE ARGENTINA.

Evening Star, Issue 25082, 25 January 1944, Page 2

OFFSIDE ARGENTINA.

Charges against the Argentine military Government, which was established by a coup d'etat, of using its'powers for the aid and comfort of the Axis, continue to grow in number. -There was the story last week of a New York paper that the American State Department had received advice from non-Argentine sources that Hitler had prepared the country as a haven for himself. Other information was said to bo that' the Nazis engineered tho coup last June which placed General Ramirez's Government in power, and that they are lining up the semi-dictatorial States in South America against the United States. It was predicted that Argentina, swollen by her own importance and egged on !by Nazi trouble-makers, would become the future Balkans of the "world by plunging other countries into war in an effort to retrieve lier traditional leadership in the southern continent. A particularly unpleasant allegation was that plans had been made with tb.3 Fascist Austrian munitions manufacturer, Fritz Mandl, for the arming of the country, and that, if grievances against neighbours could not be found otherwise, incidents such as those in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Manchuria would Ibe easily arranged. The American State Department has not denied this report, though it refrains, at the present stage, from making any direct comment on it. Now we have the story, in an Uruguay paper, of instructions alleged to havt been given by one Weilhermer, secretary of the German Embassy's political bureau in the Argentine's capital, to all Nazi agents in South America to do their duty this year to break up the panAmerican bloc. What purports to be a photograph of the actual letter conveying the supposed instructions has been published. According to this Uruguay journal, the letter definitely proves thai German agents were involved in th 6 Argentine revolution -last June, ana also in the coup that gave Bolivia a new Government. At the same time it is reported that the British authorities at Trinidad have arrested the Argentine Consul, Osmar Helmut, charged with being in the service of an enemy spy ring inside Argentina. In this case the Argentine Government has lost no time in dismissing the Consul. It admits the possibility of such a spy ring—which would certainly have: existed long before General Ramirez's Government 'came to office—and declares its intention of putting an end to all activities conflicting with its policy of neutrality, whether they come from Nazis or those whom, it is accustomed to harry as " Communists." The Government may have been the victim of circumstances in all these cases; Nazi conspiracies have gone on, without Government connivance, in half the countries of the worltt.. If it is innocent, a disadvantage for it will 'be that Hitler lied so often' and enormously in professing his peaceful aims that'mere assurances, from those who are accused of Nazi sympathies, have less power now to convince than they would otherwise have had. The Government must succeed by evidence, and most of all by its conduct, in putting its bona fides beyond suspicion.