Argentina's Brigadier General Luis Cesar Perlinger, eagle-beaked, supernationalist Minister of the Interior, swung a haymaker at able U.S. Ambassador Norman Armour. Said Perlinger: "It is not possible to smile at an Ambassador of a country which does not maintain relations with the owner of the house. I am the first to assume an angry face toward such a man, and every Argentine must do the same."
This was a diplomatic insult to which the U.S. State Department had no ready reply. In all its implications, it was also a chilly lesson in the nature of the hostilities and problems which...