THE ARGENTINE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 77, 13 March 1933, Page 5

THE ARGENTINE

FACING HARD TIMES STRUGGLE OVER FINANCE. VISITOR’S IMPRESSIONS. Argenina—El 'Dorado—silver—gold. A country with such titles sounds alluring, and yet the rich an attractive lands of South America seem curiously to lie outside the beat of the ordinary traveller, writes Sir Montague Barlow in the London “Daily Telegraph.” I had a personal reason for the journey, for it was Roger Barlow who, with Hernando Calderon, acted as treasurer to Sebastian Cabot when he made the first famous voyage of discovery up the Plate River in 1527. My family are proud to claim this definite and early link with a “Conquistador” and with the Plate, even if the link has lain in cold storage for 405 years. I spent a most enjoyable month or two at Argentina. Statistics are for mathematicians or madmen, but as a basis it is worth realising that Argentina covers rather more than a million square miles, being four times as big as France and Germany put together. It stretches over 2000 miles from tropical Brazil in the north to icy Tierra del Fuego in the south, and nearly 1000 miles across from the Atlantic seaboard on the east to the Andes in the west. The population is about 12,000,000, of which number over 2,000,000 occupy Buenos Aires. PRESENT GOVERNMENT. The present Government, the result of the upheaval in 1930, is broad based, representative of various parties, and though subject to criticism—what Government is not?—in the general view is carrying on well in difficult circumstances. It was interesting to hear the view expressed by officers in the fighting forces that no more revolutions were wanted. There were, however, even during my visit, murmurings of discontent among the “Radicales” and the Socialists, and an attempt at revolution has broken out recently; but the case with which the Government has ben able to arrest it indicates the strength of its position. Aristotle long ago defined the test of an effective aristocracy as “inherited wealth and character,” and Argentina is fortunate in being able to draw on a governing class of experience and distinction. The country’s long-drawn-out struggle for freedom early in the nineteenth century was crowned with success, largely, as Argentina remembers, through Canning’s master stroke of recognition in 1825. Throughout the long struggle, and later in the fierce constitutional fights of the mid-century, the country had no lack of courageous and forceful leaders, largely the descendants of the Spanish aristocracy—Son Martin and Arenales, Mitre and Roca, names venerated today throughout the land. Their descendants, with wealth advanced in the last half-century in the upward march of the country, are still taking a splendid share in the labours of national administraton. The late President Uriburu was son-in-law of the heroic Arenales. BAD TIMES. The country is going through a bad time; everyone assured me of that. There is difficulty in balancing the Budget; the exchange has to be kept up by refusing to part with gold; and prosperous families have to throw up their chateaux in France or their holidays in England and return to Argentina. The control of the exchange I found a hotly-contested issue. The able and clear-sighted Finance Minister, Dr. Alberto Hueyo, has, with the support of tho Government, so far successfully resisted all efforts to relay control; he is determined to maintain the credit of the country unimpaired. It is difficult not to sympathise with this determination, though in fact the restrictions undoubtedly press hardly on some investors, who cannot get any money at all out of the country. I heard the Finance Minister accused of sacrificing the interests of agriculture to the forcignor. His answer would be that agriculture and the country generally would bo the first to suffer if Argentina defaulted on the service of her foreign loans. The interest on external loans is roughly 50,000.000 in paper pesos at par, and sinking funds are an additional 40,000, 000, but with exchange at about its present figure, an additional 26,000,000 must bo allowed for inteerst and 14,000,000 for sinking funds. I gathered that the Minister of Finance was determined to maintain the punctual service of both interest and sinking fund on the national debt so long as it is physically possible to do so. Assuming the foreign exchange market had to be controlled, it is certain that the control could not have been exercised with greater honesty, efficiency, and tact. EFFECT OF OTTAWA. I was in the country both before and after tho Ottawa decisions were made public. Before publication the current impression seemed to be that England must always take Argentine beef and mutton; our working classes demanded it, and would have it. After Ottawa the cry was that England’s very tentative experiments in restriction for their meat imports would, it was feared, probably spell ruin for Argentina. On landing 1 bad tried to persuade Argentine friends to take Ottawa seriously. England may be deliberate in her decisions, but when she does act she acts effectively, and Ottawa and the swing over to Protection was the culmination of a thirty years’ struggle, and would mark a decisive change of national policy. MILD GESTURE. It was a thousand pities, in their own interest, that Argentine Governments had paid so little practical at tention to the report of tho D ’Abortion Commission of 1929, and had not adopted the reasonable proposals for trade co-operation put forward at tho time.

After Ottawa, as against undue pessimism, it was not difficult, to rub in that provisional restriction of meat purchases by England to tho amount sold to us last year could hardly be said to spell ruin for Argentina this year, uuy more than last year. It was,

in any case, a mild gesture compared with the complete embargo on the sale of imported Argentine meat imposed in the last few years by the United States, not to mention somewhat similar stolid refusals by Germany and France to buy Argentine products. The further reduction of 20 per cent, in our meat imports, voluntarily agreed to after I had left the country by all concerned, is, I gather, being accepted for what it is, namely, a temporary expedient to meet the suddeu peril.