Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, MAY 13, 1938. A FASCIST FAILURE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 May 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, MAY 13, 1938. A FASCIST FAILURE.

’pHE situation disclosed yesterday in the speedy and apparently complete suppression of a Fascist revolt in Rio de Janiero, the capital of Brazil, has extraordinary features that are all its own. One of these is that President Getulio Vargas, whom the Fascist rebels sought to overthrow, carried out as recently as November last a revolutionary coup which established him in power as a dictator in conditions very commonly regarded as being broadly on all fours with those of the Fascist dictatorships of Europe.

On November .10 last, President Vargas suspended the Brazilian Constitution, forestalled an impending election and prolonged his own tenure of the presidency. An official statement issued soon afterwards declared that the followers of Moscow had been gaining a dangerous and unsettling influence in Brazil by tactics of infiltration, and that in consequence .the Conservative Party, as well as the mass of the people and the military, had commenced to unite strongly on behalf of the President of the Republic.

In effect it was claimed by President Vargas that he had met the needs and safeguarded the interests of Brazil by his revolutionary coup. It was announced that the new Constitution, which was described by observers as corporate, would be submitted to a plebiscite and further that:—

The Government is going to put into being

immediately a great programme designed to give Brazil a position of great economic power and to give \ to her a military strength which her defence and safety require, and as regards external politics a noble ideal, but tending also to assure her operation and influence, above all on the Continent.

Although the Vargas dictatorship speedily found itself in conflict with the definitely Fascist Integralista Party, founded (in 1932) and headed by Plinio Salgado, and an earlier Fascist plot to assassinate the President, was reported to have been smashed in March last, colour was lent for a time to the view that Brazil’s latest Government was itself more or less Fascist in tone and sympathy. Until recently, liberal democracy was being attacked .severely by writers expressing the views of the dictatorship.

Of late, however, a remarkable change has been noted. Not long ago Dr Oswaldo Aranha, who is called “Brazil’s No. 1 democrat,” was called home from Washington, where he had been Brazil’s Ambassador, to take over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The transfer of Dr Aranha to this post was very commonly regarded as meaning for Brazil a return to the democratic fold and as implying also a definite inclination to turn in friendship towards the United States and away from the European dictatorships from which Salgado and his supporters are alleged to derive not only inspiration, but monetary and other support.

Writing not long ago in the “Christian Science Monitor,” Mr Robert Groves observed that the people of Brazil, though deprived of the means of expressing themselves at the polls and freely ,in the press, yet had indicated quite clearly that they were for Vargas, but did not think much of his new state, though they liked many of his reforms.

Mr Groves suggested also that the people of Brazil were impressed by the military preparations of the United States and that in the event of war they wished to be on the side of their best customer, under the wing of the strongest power in the Western Hemisphere and on the winning side.

Furthermore (he added) Brazil figures that, win or lose, with the United States she would lose less than if she won on the side of a Fascist power whose demands would be much greater at the close.

The abortive revolt reported yesterday no doubt was an outcome of the bitterness and disappointment fell by Salgado and his followers over the weakening or destruction of hopes that not long ago seemed to be within reach of realisation.