Congratulations & Solidarity

Heartening to the U.S. last week was the response of the Americas to the occupation of French territories in North Africa. Like a string of firecrackers igniting in Canada at the north, one after another the great & good neighbors in the Western Hemisphere snapped off diplomatic relations with Vichy.

The moves gave national leaders an opportunity to muzzle Vichy collaborationists working with Axis agents and the Spanish Folange. At the same time such leaders as Mexico's Manuel Avila Camacho and Brazil's Getulio Vargas emphasized that breaking with Vichy was no severance of the cultural and sentimental ties between the Americas and pre-Vichy France.

A congratulatory message to President Roosevelt was drafted by the Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense of the Hemisphere (set up by the Rio conference in January). But it went unsigned by representatives of the two countries which have not yet broken diplomatically with the Axis. Chile's delegate was absent. Argentina's abstained from voting. However, Chile's President Juan Antonio Rios sent a personal message to Franklin Roosevelt, promising increased production of vital materials and control of Nazi propaganda and espionage, praising the African operations as "guaranteeing the security of this hemisphere."

Belatedly Argentina's Foreign Minister Enrique Ruiz Guinazu, now engaged in a Nazi espionage cleanup based on U.S. State Department memoranda similar to that recently sent Chile (TIME, Nov. 16), cabled Secretary of State Cordell Hull. The Argentine people, said he, watched "with solidarity and interest the efforts made by the great and friendly nation in safeguarding the security of the Americas."

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