INTERNATIONAL: Hungry Statesmen & Honest Press

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Unlike earnest Russian Reds, the Communists of Uruguay have a highly developed sense of humor. Last week they played a practical joke on the Seventh Pan-American Conference at Montevideo (TIME, Dec. 11). The joke kept august delegates of 21 American nations standing hungrily about in a great marble hall for more than an hour and a half while their dinner grew dry and stale.

The banquet had been tendered by massive President Dr. Gabriel Terra of Uruguay to Secretary of State Cordell Hull and the nine other foreign ministers of American countries at the Conference. To seat the 200 statesman-guests, each jealous of his rank, was the ticklish job of Senor Carlos de Yeregui, mincing-mannered Uruguayan Chef de Protocols. In plenty of time before the banquet Senor Yeregui called his limousine, set out from his office with the 200 precious place cards and the indispensable seating list. Chuckling, Montevideo's merry Communists stopped Senor Yeregui's car, forced his chauffeur to drive down a dark side street and held the frantic Chef de Protocole prisoner for agonizing hours.

Such is the nature of statesmen that without the seating list they could not eat. President Terra is the Dictator of Uruguay in affairs of state but he dared not try to seat his guests for fear of making a faux pas. Secretary Hull, though he had urged "informality" and harped on President Roosevelt's "good-neighbor policy" ever since the Conference opened, did not rise to this emergency with any such suggestion as "Why don't we all just sit down?"

Since nobody knew where the Chef de Protocole was it was solemnly announced that he had been "delayed by illness." When the chuckling Communists let him go at last, he rushed to the marble banquet hall red-faced and spluttering. Dealing the 200 place cards with the speed and accuracy of a croupier at baccarat, Chef de Protocole Yeregui soon had the fuming, famished statesmen safely seated.

"The Bankers." Major work of the Conference week was to organize ten committees, 24 subcommittees and to deal in the Steering Committee with a sensational proposal by pugnacious Mexican Foreign Minister Dr. Jose Manuel Puig Casauranc. He wanted the Conference to declare a six to ten-year all-American moratorium on international public and private debts. As high words began to fly, correspondents pressed their ears to the broad panels of the Steering Committee's door. Scandalized, the Conference secretariat sent Uruguayan Republican guards in blue uniforms with scarlet breastplates, spiked steel helmets and imposing white-holstered revolvers to chase the correspondents away. Thereafter newshawks were held at a distance of two corridors from the Steering Committee.