ARGENTINA: Flabbiness Featured

Neutrals, as well as belligerents, can be either firm or flabby. Last week the neutral Argentine Government of suave, reactionary President Ramon S. (for nothing) Castillo treated Germany with all the firmness of orange marmalade:

> Argentina ordered its ships to make all U.S. landings at Gulf ports, avoiding the U-boat-infested waters outside of east-coast harbors. High Argentine sources pontificated that, although Germany had offered Argentine vessels safe passage through the blockade, Argentina did not wish to suggest “collusion” with a non-American power. The same sources claimed that “in principle” Argentina still upheld a neutral’s right to the freedom of the seas. In effect, however, Argentina had admitted Germany’s right to blockade wherever it wanted to.

> Foreign Minister Enrique Ruiz-Guiñazu announced that the German torpedoing of the Argentine freighter Rio Tercero (TIME, July 6) was a closed incident. Argentina had demanded: 1) an apology and assurances against repetition; 2) full indemnity; 3) a German salute to the Argentine flag. Germany had agreed to the first two, but had spurned the flag salute as an obsolete diplomatic practice unwelcome to the “new Germany.”

Behind Argentina’s boneless neutrality, observers continued to read the Castillo. Government’s fear that one more bungled German sinking of an Argentine ship would arouse to fever pitch that large part of the Argentine public which, unlike President Castillo, would gladly repudiate German designs on the Western Hemisphere.