Colonel's Axis

Mexico City last week gave Colonel Fulgencio Batista the largest, noisiest and most colorful reception that has been given any foreign visitor since Lindbergh. Cuba's barrel-chested little "strong man" had climbed up to the city's mile-high plateau in a special train provided by the President for a ten day visit during which he will exchange neighborhood gossip with Mexico's President Lazaro Cardenas, talk shop with Mexico's military chiefs. Conscious that the eyes of Washington were upon him to be sure he did not show too much interest in radical Mexico's expropriation stunts or in her barter deals with fascist countries, Colonel Batista lost no time in seeing U. S. press correspondents, reassuring them that Cuba is "not going Communist, nor Fascist, nor Nazi. We are progressives." The Colonel recently had his bread buttered with a $50,000,000 U. S. bank loan to Cuba and he showed he had not forgotten it. Because the Colonel believes that "social aspirations are similar" in the three countries, he proposed a "United States-Cuba-Mexico axis," declared that "there is no room in the Western Hemisphere for any political ideology of Europe."

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