ARGENTINA: In Plain Words

Buenos Aires’ plush, proper Plaza Hotel was overrun by the multitude. Its plush was ruffled, its hush profaned by thousands of eager Argentines who stormed its glass-and-wrought-iron doors, jammed its dining rooms and lobby, crowded the street outside. They had come to applaud an unusual spectacle: a U.S. Ambassador conducting what amounted to a political rally against the Government of Strong Man Juan Domingo Perón.

When Ambassador Spruille Braden took his seat at the banquet table, a wild ovation echoed through the building. During his speech the audience cheered, jumped up, waved handkerchiefs. Women cheer leaders pranced on tables. Probably no foreigner in Argentina had ever raised such a racket.

Braden led off with a bull’s-eye: an anecdote of British Ambassador Sir Samuel Hoare in Franco’s Spain. When “nationalists” smashed the embassy’s windows, Sir Samuel telephoned to Franco’s Foreign Minister, who promised to send police. “Don’t send me more police, Mr. Minister,” Ambassador Hoare replied. “Send me fewer nationalists.”

Who is Murat? Braden mentioned no names, but his audience got the point: Perón’s noisy “nationalists” had been Braden’s principal foes in Argentina. They knew what Spruille Braden meant, too, when he went on: “

The war that has just concluded was not fought to prosecute the biggest criminal alone, but also his henchmen, accomplices and concealers. Using the words of a secret report . . . [at] the Congress of Vienna: ‘Let us not forgive in the person of Murat the crimes we have punished in the person of Bonaparte.’ ”

Toward the close of his speech, Braden assured his audience that his recent elevation to Assistant Secretary of State was not a kicking upstairs: “

Let no one imagine that my being transferred to Washington means the abandonment of the task I have under taken. The voice of freedom makes itself heard in this land. I shall hear it in Washington with the same clarity with which I hear it in Buenos Aires.”

Some officials in the U.S. State Department had long hesitated to put pressure on Argentina’s Government, fearing that such intervention would unite all Argentines against the domineering Yanqui. But Spruille Braden’s most outspoken speech seemed to have done no such thing. Except for Perón’s henchmen, Argentines applauded.