Last week, without fuss or fanfare, the State Department announced the first great act of the Third Term: "The President has named the Honorable Henry A. Wallace, Vice President-elect, as his special representative . . . at the ceremonies of the inauguration of General Avila Camacho as President of Mexico, December 1, 1940."
That announcement was significant not because of the choice of modest, unassuming Henry Wallace for the honor. It had long been prophesied that Henry Wallace would have a big part to play in Term III. By the announcement the U. S. officially recognized swart, genial, polo-playing Manuel Avila Camacho as the winner of the election last July—but it had long been generally known that Avila Camacho would get the U. S. nod. What the Wallace announcement showed was the direction of Third Term Latin-American diplomacy. Through the first two administrations of President Roosevelt, U. S. citizens gradually became aware of the patient, unpretentious work of Secretary of State Cordell Hull in pushing the Good Neighbor policy. That Henry Wallace would attend the Avila Camacho inaugural meant that a big effort was being made to turn Cordell Hull's Pan-American preparation into dramatic accomplishments.
The Wallace visit promised to be the curtain raiser. The Mexican Government had invited an imposing list of U. S. dignitaries: Under Secretary Welles from the State Department, Democratic Senator Robert Wagner and Republican Senator Charles McNary, two Representatives from the House, Defense Commissioner Sidney Hillman and others. Henry Wallace planned to drive quietly with his secretary James Le Cron to Laredo, Tex., join the Mexican Ambassador to the U. S. there, then motor over the Pan-American highway that cuts straight through the bleached desert to Monterrey before it climbs the mountains to the plains of Mexico City. There were no longer fears 14 that an uprising of Almazanistas would mar the ceremony.* There was no doubt that warmhearted, impulsive Mexicans could give a magnificent show for the Vice President-elect— putting into it the same emotion, enthusiasm and exuberance that they display on their occasional anti-American demonstrations, or, the celebrations that commemorate the seizure of the foreign oil properties.
In Henry Wallace they would be saluting the New Deal's foremost theoretician of Latin-American relations. He believes that Latin America must be prosperous if U. S. democratic forms are to survive. He visualizes great intercontinental highways, college students vacationing through Latin America, Spanish and English interchangeably spoken.
Thus when Henry Wallace crosses the Rio Grande he will be in the position of a theoretician facing reality. Well-wishers feared that the experience might not be entirely comfortable. Exquisitely polite and hard-boiled Mexican politicians never yawn during a speech on U. S. friendship with Mexico.