MANY GENERALS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXV, Issue 3369, 24 September 1931, Page 2

MANY GENERALS

LATIN AMERICAN ARMIES. While Latin-American countries seldom need armies for use against foreign foes, their military establishments are necessary frequently to keep civil governments in power (writes C. H. Calhoun in the New York Times). Sometimes, too, they become the weapons for overthrowing existing governments. Wars between Latin-American nations seem to be unlikely to-day, and it is a question as to whether the armies are a safeguard or a menace to domestic peace. Certainly they are expensive luxuries for many countries. With her independence guaranteed by treaty with the United States, Panama has never had a national army, yet the only war in recent years was between Panama, with no army, and Costa Rica, with the smallest army in the hemisphere. Without an army, Panama has had only one revolution in a quarter of a century, and whether she would have had more than that or the one would have been avoided with an army is a question. Panama has a national police force, which was armed with 500 rifles purchased in England in 1926 after the conflict with Costa Rica and an uprising of the San Bias Indians when the police were armed with only night-sticks and revolvers. True to her boast of more school teachers than soldiers, Costa Rica has an army of only 250 soldiers and forty-eight officers, on which she spends a little more than 500,000 dollars a year. It was due to the disloyalty of the army that Federrico Tinoco, then Minister of War, promoted the only successful revolution in Costa Rica in the last fifty years. The army prevented the possible overthrow of the Government of Honduras in a recent revolt, and probably proved the worth of its cost, 874,338 dollars a year, which is a considerable item in the Budget. The present army has 2777 soldiers, 330 line officers, and forty-nine general officers, although a convention for the limitation of armaments in Central American countries, signed in Washington in 1923, restricts the peace-time strength to 2500, including officers. The preponderance of generals emphasised by many in speaking [ humorously of Latin-American

armies is not true in Ecuador, with a present enlisted strength of 4000, and only two generals and eight colonels. The United States army has in the Canal Zone less than 10,000 enlisted men, and has had four generals. Ecuador’s authorised military strength is 6000 men and 900 officers, but on account of the necessity of economy reinlistments are not kept up to the limit at present. The last revolution in Ecuador originated in the army, and if she has another that is likely where it will begin.

With a population of 3,000,000 Ecuador’s army is proportionately larger than that of Colombia, with 8,000,000 population and an army of 8000. However, the army has more influence in the Government in Ecuador than in Colombia, although the appropriation for the army in Colombia in 1931 was only 1,200,000 dollars, a reduction of 60 per cent, from 1930, and President Olaya Herrera, in his last message to Congress, advised the necessity of further cuts.

While the strength of Venezuela’s military force is unknown, it is one of the best-equipped, best disciplined, the prompest paid, and probably the largest in comparison with population in Latin-America. At Maracay, which is the headquarters of General Juan Vicente Gomez and really the capital of the republic, there are stationed 3000, including tank corps, machine gun companies, field artillery, infantry and cavalry.

General Gomez also has an aviation corps of ten aeroplanes at his absolute and complete control, and the army, supported by oil royalties and monopolies of which he is the chief beneficiary, has made possible a dictatorship which General Gomez has been exercising in Venezuela for a quarter of a century. While Latin-American armies still are poorly and sometimes infrequently paid, often ill-clad and illfed, and inadequately equipped in cases, there has been great improvement in the last decade. Once most of the soldiers were barefoot and clothed in rags instead of in uniforms, poorly armed, and frequently forced to forage for food.