National Affairs: Regular Visitor

Spry little President Harmodio Arias of Panama, who lunched with Herbert Hoover in the White House when he was President-elect (TIME, Aug. 1, 1932). was back again this week to see Franklin Delano Roosevelt on what Panama newspapers called “the most important mission since the birth of the Republic of Panama”—a birth at which President Theodore Roosevelt was the much-criticized accoucheur 30 years ago.

President Arias, who left behind in Panama the world’s most beauteous President’s Wife (see cut), was met on the dock in Manhattan by their two sons, Harmodio Jr. and Roberto, students at New Jersey’s Peddie School. While cameramen snapped his leathery face, Dr. Arias parried reporters’ questions, snapped, “Most emphatically relations are not strained! [between Panama and the U. S.]. … Of course we have our controversies.”

These today are topped by: 1) What to do about the drift into Panama of unemployed from the Canal Zone. 2) The complaint of Panama merchants that they are being undersold by the Zone’s commissary stores. 3) The squabble over Zone and Panaman radio broadcasts. The Panama Press urged President Arias to remind Franklin Roosevelt that Theodore Roosevelt declared in 1904: “Least of all do we desire to interfere with the business and prosperity of the people of Panama.”