BRAZIL: Report to the Nation

Into Rio's Palacio Tiradentes one afternoon this week strode well-groomed Professor Pereira Lira, President Eurico Gaspar Dutra's personal counselor. He carried a heavy, leather-bound pile of papers, which he placed on the speaker's desk in the Chamber of Deputies. To the opening session of the Brazilian Congress the president had sent a 130,000-word message on the state of the nation.

Ex-soldier Dutra, the honest plodder who had faced one crisis after another in three uneasy years as president, gave a good account of himself. He had balanced the 1947 budget and had $25...