FOREIGN RELATIONS: Nice People

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To a home-town audience in Baltimore last week, wealthy, socialite ex-Diplomat James Bruce described a couple of friendships he made when he was U.S. Ambassador to Argentina from 1947 to 1949.

"President Perón," said Bruce,* now back at his old job as vice-president of the National Dairy Products Corporation, "is one of the nicest fellows I've ever met in my life. Perón admitted he didn't like some of his political associates. He said he couldn't choose them." As for the President's lady: "Señora Perón is a person of great beauty and great charm. She is a wonderful dinner companion . . . a great speaker and a great rabble-rouser."

Some Argentine political and economic practices are "a little unorthodox by our standards," Bruce conceded, but "one has to realize that they're South Americans and that we're North Americans. My theory is that maybe they're right and we're wrong."

* Whose brother David is U.S. Ambassador to France.

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