National Affairs, Jun. 17, 1940

mural to do for the Golden Gate Exposition.

The adventures of Diego Rivera were of more than passing interest to the U. S.

last week. So was everything else which indicated intensified Communazi penetration in Latin America. Reason for this concern was bluntly put by T'.e United States News: "The Germans even now are invading Latin America." So were the Italians. In much of Latin America, they and their commercial interests outweigh the Germans in potency and numbers.

Washington acted. At the State Department's instance, the Navy dispatched a second cruiser (the new, 10,000-ton Wichita) to Latin-American waters in the wake of the Quincy. Chief of Staff George C. Marshall gravely warned a House committee that the Regular Army and the National Guard should be prepared to sustain friendly regimes in Latin America (Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador), possibly "within a month or two." Discussed was a plan to set up a great Latin-American trade corporation, to be financed by the U. S. and to act as a buffer between a German-Italian Europe and the Americas.

But Washington's actions were hesitant, tentative, halfway. They had to be. The U. S. people, long used to comforting "Good Neighbor" talk, were not yet ready to accept the idea that the U. S. might have to police its neighborhood to the South.

Almost as shocking to U. S. citizens would be an announcement that the U. S. and Japan were making up (see p. 39). Ostensibly on an independent mission, retired Major General John F. O'Ryan set off for a fact-finding survey of Japan, Manchukuo and conquered North China.

President Roosevelt saw and talked with many men last week. But one of them was Major General O'Ryan.