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Correspondents leaped to fill in the comparison between the 1933 Hitler threat—which George Messersmith had recognized at first glance—and the present-day threat of Communism. There was no mistaking what George Messersmith meant. Like many another diplomat in Latin America, he knew that the principal cell of Communist infiltration in Latin America in the late '30s and early '40s was in Mexico, under the skilled hand of the late Constantine Oumansky. Like others, he now believes that the cell has shifted to South America, where Communists are working and organizing like beavers (see LATIN AMERICA) . In Buenos Aires, Messersmith can only watch—from the splendor of the colonnaded U.S. Embassy. He feels it is his principal job to get along with Perón, while seeking to contain the Peron influence in Argentina and preventing its spread to the rest of South America.
In this effort he is hampered by the divided U.S. policy and the clash of State Department personalities. At Chapultepec, the nations of the Western Hemisphere agreed to meet soon thereafter at Rio de Janeiro for two purposes: 1) to draft the treaty for the Act of Chapultepec (which was a wartime agreement); 2) to discuss an inter-hemispheric defense agreement under which the U.S. would undertake to furnish standardized arms to all Western Hemisphere nations. So far, Spruille Braden, unwilling to let Argentina in, has refused to set a date for it. Until that conference is held, Latins will still be skeptical of genuine U.S. good-neighborliness, and confused by U.S. policy. And until Secretary of State Byrnes or the foreign-affairs leaders of the new Congress take time out from world "peacemaking" to look at the hemisphere, U.S. policy will stay divided.