ARMY & NAVY: Butter and Toast

To keep on good terms with good neighbors in Latin America, and turn bad ones into good ones, the U. S. lately has lavished foofaraw and funds on Brazil, Haiti, Nicaragua. Last week in Washing ton, Paraguay’s President-elect José Félix Estigarribia got his share: a $500,000 credit to bolster the wavering Paraguayan peso, plus further loans to finance purchases of U. S. materials, machinery, services for Paraguayan roads and industry.

Aware that Germany yearns to get in Paraguay’s good books with barter dealings, Secretary of State Cordell Hull beam ingly chalked up another score for “inter-American cooperation,” devised others yet to come.

En route by liner to the U. S. was a treaty-hunting representative of hitherto uncooperative Argentina. And on the U. S. Navy cruiser Nashville, escorted by the next Chief of Staff of the U. S. Army, were Brazil’s Chief of Staff Pedro de Goés Monteiro and five of his army officials.

Diplomatic butter in the form of $120,000,000 credit was served last March to Brazil’s Foreign Minister Oswaldo Aranha. Beady-eyed, flap-chinned General Goés Monteiro was on a military mission, returning the visit U. S. Brigadier General George Catlett Marshall had just paid him. That capable soldier-diplomat was dispatched to Brazil after authoritarian-minded Goés Monteiro began toasting the discipline, glory and honor of the German Army and had accepted an invitation to review Nazi troops. Last week the U. S. War Department, announcing its plans to toast Goes Monteiro this week, disclosed that instead of returning via Rome and Berlin he will fly directly home in a U. S. bomber.

Pedro de Goés Monteiro is a hard-drinking ex-cowboy who worships Napoleon, has false teeth, and in part owes his rise to Oswaldo Aranha. He talks so much about imbuing Brazilians with military spirit that he has had to deny any personal ambition to be a military dictator. To all appearances he is a good & loyal servant of Dictator-President Getulio Vargas and as such he will be accorded honors only less than those due a visiting ruler. A tank escort, a military guard at the Brazilian Embassy, a chat with Franklin Roosevelt, tea with Cordell Hull, the personal attentions of Chief of Staff Malin Craig are part of the Washington ritual. Ranking generals will then accompany him on an aerial tour of U. S. Army posts, with appropriate reviews and banquets on the way.