National Affairs: Thoroughly Pleasant

It was such a nice scene: it deserved to be engraved on a World’s Fair souvenir spoon. Dr. Oscar Ivanissevich, the new Argentine ambassador to the U.S., was presenting his credentials to President Harry Truman. Dr. Ivanissevich was smiling and the President was smiling, and they were both saying what fine countries the other represented. It was hard to remember that only a few months ago the State Department was spreading the idea that Argentina’s President Juan Peron was nothing but a fascist jerk.

Tall, brown-haired Dr. Ivanissevich, who had been Peron’s personal physician before becoming a diplomat, made it plain that this notion had been only a notion. “You should know,” he said, “through the lips of a man who possesses the singular merit of never having lied, the truth regarding the Argentine Republic.”

President Peron. he explained happily, was the “first authentic representative of the true Argentine people,” and one who was “struggling for the same democratic principles found on the banner of President Roosevelt.” In Argentina “liberty is founded on immovable bases, and every person is the pilot and maker of his own destiny.”

Harry Truman, whose Administration, after being defeated in its anti-Peron tactics, is now wooing Argentina, was not to be outdone. Said he: “… I am thinking of the objectives and ideals which have always motivated our peoples . . . impulses [which] have been in great part, as you say, Mr. Ambassador, profoundly Christian and profoundly human. … I hope your stay in Washington will be thoroughly pleasant. . . .”

In Moscow, last week, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda almost blew a gasket over George Messersmith, U.S. Ambassador to Argentina. It charged that Messersmith had told American Legionnaires in Buenos Aires that a Russo-American war was inevitable, that he was trying to get Argentines, regardless of “ideology or past sins,” into a bloc on the side of the U.S. In his best diplomatese, Ambassador Messersmith denied having made the statements. But Pravda could have saved its breath. If there ever were a Russo-American war, there would be little doubt which side anti-Communist Argentina would be on.