MEXICO: Padilla’s Week

Official Washington saw a good deal of the dark, eloquent visitor who has come to symbolize the will toward hemisphere cooperation: Mexican Foreign Minister Ezequiel Padilla (TIME, April 6). Washington liked what it saw—a man whose genuineness is as obvious as his grace.

He worked with Mexican Ambassador Dr. Francisco Castillo Nájera toward trade and priorities programs with the U.S. But most of the time, and very informally, he visited. He received callers, apologizing for his English, while an attaché hammered a typewriter in one corner of the room and Embassy personnel passed constantly in and out. He gave Vice President Henry Wallace a chance to test his Spanish, and got along so well with British Ambassador Lord Halifax that they exchanged autographed photographs. One night he received 350 guests, and during the reception went upstairs with Ambassador Castillo Nájera to consider the problem of dilapidated Embassy furniture.

Late in the week Foreign Minister Padilla took a drive along the Potomac, past Arlington Cemetery, and out to Mount Vernon. He asked a few questions, such as when the Japanese cherry blossoms would bloom, but was usually quiet, his expressive hands working as when he makes a speech. That night, at a dinner given him by Senator Tom Connally, Ezequiel Padilla said: “I toast the greatness of this American nation. . . . In human history never has any nation on the earth had a greater job than the United States has now. Nevertheless, in all the phases of this job shines an indomitable fate, and in all the souls unbreakable confidence, because liberty and freedom give confidence and link the hearts. . . . As soon as war is finished, misery and sufferings will come against the wall of victory and, if provisions have not been made, our unity will risk the change from the catastrophe of war to the catastrophe of peace.”