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D for Results. Not all Rockefeller projects have come to happy fruition. Worst boner was the launching of a $500,000 advertising campaign in Latin-American newspapers to persuade tourists to visit the U.S. The newspapers were carelessly chosen. Fat advertisements went to Axis-sympathizing papers while U.S. sympathizer like Buenos Aires' Critica and Rio de Janeiro's Vangnarda were neglected. Worst of all, in view of the high rate of dollar exchange, asking Latin Americans to tour the U.S. was a horrid joke.
Nelson Rockefeller's pet project, the elimination of Nazi agents from U.S. business concerns, backfired with annoying results. By last week several hundred agents had been fired by their employers. Many of them had promptly hopped off to the U.S.. sold their services to their former employers' competitors, returned to Latin America to steal business for their new firms.
The U.S. has some firm and fast friends in Latin America. Many of the most intelligent of these wish that the Rockefeller Committee would spend some of its money to encourage organizations in the Latin-American countries to do some of the work the Committee is trying to do alone. The Cultural Relations section, under onetime Minister to Portugal and Bolivia Robert Granville Caldwell has obtained U.S. scholarships for Latin-American doctors, planned an Inter-American Academy of Sciences and a Cultural Institute, sent out a traveling exhibition of paintings, etc. It has done nothing yet to combat German textbooks, written by German educators but wisely translated and sponsored by eminent Spaniards.
Both Your Houses. For the last four weeks Nazi propaganda directed against the U.S. had appeared in increasing quantities in Argentine newspapers, on the radio, in the mail, through books and cartoons. The propaganda is an artful blending of subtle innuendo in high places and blatant, vicious attack in low places.
U.S. seizure of Axis ships was "hasty and illegal," whereas Argentina is following a "fair" policy in buying Axis ships. The U.S. is blamed for difficulties in shipping 200,000 tons of wheat to Spain. Actually there was a shortage of ships. The film Argentine Nights, which was whistled off the screen in Buenos Aires, was an "insult to Argentine sensibilities." Actually the demonstration was carefully staged. Key to the whole campaign is the argument that the ABC countries should unite in a bloc, excluding the U.S. and the rest of Latin America. The Rockefeller Committee is not responsible for major U.S. diplomacy in Latin America. That tortuous and gigantic task belongs to the U.S. State Department. The Rockefeller Committee's job is to harmonize inter-American cultural and commercial relations and is chiefly one of propaganda—put a case in its best possible light.