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Prodded by public opinion, Secretary Stettinius sent Spruille Braden to Argentina as Ambassador. Braden undertook to harass the fast-rising Perón clique. He became a kind of hero—a lone man standing up to a dictator. It was a hopelessly unequal contest—quite apart from the question of whether a U.S. Ambassador should have embroiled himself in such a contest in the first place. Perón's triumph at the polls was merely underlined by the State Department's Blue Book, issued two weeks before the 1946 election. The Blue Book clearly demonstrated that the Argentine Government had tolerated German agents, had collaborated with them, and had taken no effective steps to destroy German penetration in Argentina. But, partly because the war was over, partly because of Argentine sensitivity to Yanqui interference, and partly because of Perón's popularity at home, the Blue Book, and Braden's policy in general, merely strengthened Perón's hand.
The Schoolteacher. In this impossible situation, the U.S. called on career diplomat George Messersmith. He had been in many a ticklish spot before, and had survived some distant detours (including the consul generalship in Argentina in 1928). Dutifully he had touched every rung of a tedious ladder—vice consul in Fort Erie, Ont., and the Netherlands West Indies; consul and consul general in Antwerp; consul general in Buenos Aires and Berlin; Minister to Austria; Ambassador to Cuba and Mexico. His squirrelly energy kept propelling his stubby figure up an incline that has defeated many a less persistent and less energetic man.
Born of durable German stock in eastern Pennsylvania, George Messersmith first pointed for the respectable lot of a schoolmaster. At Keystone State Normal School and Delaware College he acquired a modest education. He became superintendent of schools in several quiet Delaware towns, wrote a solid text on the state government of Delaware. Newsmen who do not warm up to his cold manner complain that they sometimes feel as if they were being lectured by their old grade-school principal.
At 30 he was still a bachelor and settling slowly into the demeanor appropriate to a vice president of the Delaware Board of Education. Then, in 1914, he broke the traces. He married Marion Mustard, the daughter of a moderately fixed Pennsylvania Dutch family, and joined the U.S. Foreign Service. With his bride he embarked for Fort Erie and a new start.
Exporter. A schoolmaster's training suited a consul's search for U.S. business opportunity abroad. He ferreted happily among forms, statistics and the economic lore of each new foreign post. He worked fiercely, snowed Washington under voluminous surveys. Upon a pile of Messersmith's trade reports a harried assistant in Buenos Aires once slipped an extra form: "Name—George S. Messersmith. Business—Biggest exporter of paper in Argentina."
Businessmen admired his thoroughness, but his ruthless working habits ruined his digestion. In 1921 he underwent an operation for stomach ulcers, and he has had recurrent disorders ever since. He does not drink. He refuses all but a few dinner invitations, invariably nibbles at home first on his special diet of boiled vegetables and milk. His lament: "It is not very amusing just to sit and watch people eat and drink for 26 years."