The Press: Cortesi Under Fire

For 17 of his 42 years, lean, bald, stubble-lipped Arnaldo Cortesi was a correspondent for the New York Times in Rome. Son of a robust, retired Italian journalist (who had for 29 years been head of the Associated Press bureau in Rome) and a Boston mother, Cortesi was perfectly equipped to tell U. S. citizens about Mussolini’s Italy.

On New Year’s Day, 1939, the Italian Government told him to quit his job.

along with some 200 other Italian newsmen who worked for alien bureaus. Shortly thereafter, Arnaldo Cortesi left Italy, went to Mexico City for the Times. There, last week, he was once more in hot water, this time of his own heating.

One day last month, Cortesi sent the Times a long, brilliantly documented dispatch telling in detail of Nazi-Communist preparations in Mexico. For months Cortesi had gathered evidence of German infiltration in Mexico, German and Russian influence over labor and the press.

Said Timesman Cortesi: “The objective in Mexico is not … to pave the way for invading armies, but … to create a diversion south of the Rio Grande capable of diverting the attention of the United States . . . from events in Europe.” Next day, Hal Burton reported substantially the same facts to the New York Daily News, and the lid was off.

A Mexican newspaper, El Popular, organ of Vicente Lombardo Toledano’s Mexican Federation of Labor, opened fire on Cortesi and Burton. Ever since the Nazi-Soviet pact last August, El Popular has carried on a relentless campaign of invective against democracy. Not even Mexico’s pro-Nazi magazine Timon can equal the virulence of El Popular’1- attacks on the U. S., President Roosevelt, Britain and France.

El Popular printed a “translation” of Cortesi’s story which omitted most of the evidence, distorted the facts. Genaro Vasquez, Attorney General of Mexico, promptly summoned both newsmen to appear and prove their statements. Burton, in Mexico on special assignment, quietly departed. Last week he was back in Manhattan. Cortesi stuck to his post, presented his case.

Meanwhile, other correspondents who had known of fifth-column activities in Mexico but hesitated to report them, followed Cortesi’s lead and filed their stories. They met the same treatment.

From the files of Edward Morgan, United Press chief in Mexico City, two telegrams sent from U. P. in Manhattan were stolen and printed by El Popular as evidence of a “war of nerves” against Mexico. Since the messages were not for publication-U. P.’s Morgan was not summoned.

President Lazaro Cardenas and his Government last week played ostrich, denied there was any Nazi or Communist influence at work in Mexico.