MONTEVIDEO

While other nations bicker with each other across the Atlantic, the United States is busy untangling a delicate problem in the Western Hemisphere. At the Montevideo conference which began Sunday, Secretary of State Cordel Hull has as his purpose not only the establishment of amicable relationships among the Latin American countries, but the revival of a Pan-American Trade Union, once mutually beneficial, but which has in the last decade been allowed to die a lingering death.

It is significant to note that, since 1929, the trade of the United States with South America has declined 82 per cent, whilst the total foreign trade went down only 69 per cent. This starting decrease is due in part to a not unjustified distrust of this country as the "Colossus of the North," but it can also be attributed to sober economic causes. Constantly rising tariff walls, some necessary for the protection of United States industry and some purely arbitrary, have served to shunt an unwonted amount of Latin American commerce into European ports. The present difficulty of getting foreign monetary exchange, due to the instability of the dollar, is the immediate cause of an almost complete paralysis of trade with the countries below the Equator.

In allowing this rich and growing market to be weaned away from them by enterprising Europeans, American merchants have further demonstrated their amazing indifference to the future. Years of neglect and misunderstanding have opened a chasm between the two American whose felicitous closing will require all the diplomatic skill at Mr. Hull's command.