CHILE: Lend-Lease

Chile's Ambassador Rodolfo Michels and the State Department's Under Secretary Sumner Welles, apostle of hemisphere unity, last week signed a Lend-Lease agreement in Washington. The agreement did not greatly improve Chile's actual prospects of getting needed industrial equipment while there is a shipping shortage (see p.27). But the general warmth of Chilean and U.S. relations moved stern, unsmiling President Juan Antonio Rios to make an extraordinary statement in Santiago: he came out for a fourth term for Good Neighbor Roosevelt. President Rios, now in his first (four-year) term, expressed the hope that President Roosevelt "will continue to head the Government of the U.S. until he has completed his work of generous cooperation with the American nations."

President Rios added that he hoped no one would think that he was interfering in "intra-American politics."