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Messersmith's success on the other points of his mission cannot yet be judged. The Perón Government has rounded up a few German and Japanese nationals, and announced plans to nationalize Axis-controlled industries. The Strong Man has said that in the .next war, Argentina would fight alongside the U.S. But at least one important wartime Nazi agent has been cleared by the Argentine courts, and others continue to hold high places in Government councils.
Words & Deeds. The prelude to George Messersmith's Argentine mission is as long and weird as any chapter in U.S. foreign relations. In the cloistered halls of the U.S. State Department, the word "policy" has two meanings. To one group of men "policy" means something you say; to another it means something you do.
In the early '30s, when the Good Neighbor Policy was instituted, the man to whom policy mainly meant words was good, grey Secretary of State Cordell Hull; the man to whom it meant deeds was glacial Under Secretary Sumner Welles. Today, Hull's position has been taken by Spruille Braden, who is still Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs, and George Messersmith's immediate boss. The chief exponent of the philosophy that policy means deeds (or tactics and approach) is George Messersmith.
The Good Neighbor Policy, which had as its aim the bringing together of all Western Hemisphere nations in a democratic group, worked, in effect, when it was administered by Welles (along with some shrewd and cold-hearted Welles meddling in internal Latin American affairs). It was least effective when it was merely pronounced in righteous terms by Cordell Hull, who had an unhappy faculty of alienating sensitive Latinos with the Tennessee mountain vigor of his epithets.
But the war shoved the Good Neighbor Policy in the background, especially in relation to Argentina. In 1943 a military junta pulled off a coup d'etat in Buenos Aires. Falteringly, the U.S. first recognized one militarist regime, then denied recognition to the next.
As the Nazi war machine expired, the U.S. heart seemed to soften. In February 1945, the U.S. met with other American republics in Mexico City to open the gate for U.N. Argentina was not invited. The Act of Chapultepec, however, pointed the way back into the fold. Argentina might regain the family bosom if she 1) agreed to a system of collective security in the Western Hemisphere, 2) wiped out Axis commercial influence and deported Axis spies, 3) declared war on the Axis.
Belatedly Argentina went through the paper process of declaring war. But before she had fulfilled any of the other conditions of Chapultepec, the U.S. hastily thrust out a forgiving lollipop: recognition of the new Argentine regime. Then, at San Francisco, the U.S. found itself sponsoring Argentine membership in U.N.
Harassment. The months between Chapultepec and San Francisco marked the period of supreme vacillation in U.S. policy toward the Argentine. The real reasons for the sudden shifts probably will not be known until the official documents are published years hence. But after San Francisco, the policy shifted again.