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In a small house in Buenos Aires' Calle Juncal last week a bustling blonde housekeeper dusted provincial furniture, straightened somber religious pictures, made an old-fashioned brass bed. Icy rains had brought autumn to Argentina, and the master of the house in the Calle Juncal, Ramon S. Castillo, was moving in from his suburban quinta in Martinez beside the Rio de la Plata. In the domed Palacio del Congreso, Acting President Castillo's political housekeepers were similarly occupied. They swept out the debris of one of the most extraordinary sessions any legislative body had ever held, made ready for the opening of a new session of Congress this month. At this session Acting President Castillo must make a decision that will vitally affect Argentina, the U.S. and the world: which world to join in World War II.
If Britain fell, Argentines knew that they must choose between Germany and the U.S. But Argentines also knew that the decision could not wait until the war was decided. Each new move of the U.S. toward war brought more & more un comfortable pressure on Argentina to choose — and choose now.
Most of Argentina's fellow American republics thought Axis ships should be seized and had seized as many as they could. Bases were wanted by the U.S. throughout Latin America and most of the Latin-American republics were willing to make bases available. But Argentina had not yet decided to seize ships. Argentina had not yet decided to yield bases for hemisphere defense. With not much trust in the good intentions of any great power, Germany, Britain or the U.S., Argentina was trying to be neutral in an almost totally unneutral world. Acting President Castillo said so again last week: "Argentina will continue to maintain neutrality in the European war." It was significant that the No. 1 Argentine should refer to the World War as European. Replied U.S. Ambassador Nor man Armour (in a speech to the Buenos Aires English Club) : "Between those who destroy the law and those who observe it there is no admissible neutrality." The decision was a desperately difficult one for Argentina to make. In no free country was the economic outlook bleaker or the contrast sharper between what the nation wanted and what it had.
Ships and Sheep. Turning the problem over in his mind as he sat at his desk in the Casa Rosada,* Ramên Castillo had only to look out of the window to see one miserable aspect of it: Buenos Aires har bor, once South America's busiest port, almost deserted of shipping, with 18 German and Italian vessels lying at anchor as reminders of the pressure on him. Once an average of 150 ships a day put into Buenos Aires. Now there are about 26 a week. Of 400,000 tons of meat which Britain contracted for six months ago, Britain has been able to move only some 75,000 tons so far. In Patagonia, where storage space is already crammed to capacity, 1,500,000 head of sheep cannot be slaughtered because there are no ships to take the mutton away. Yet soon they must be slaughtered anyway, to keep the rest of the herds from starving.