Luce Morals

"Down with the Yankee Octupus." "Death Before Living as Slaves!" read the banners carried by students in the clouds of La Paz (alt. 11,900 ft.), capital of mineral-rich, dirt-poor, coup-prone Bolivia (pop. 3,300,000). The angry crowd was demonstrating against an article in magamogul Henry Luce's Time (circ. 2,300,000), quoting an unidentified American embassy official as having said that the only solution to Bolivia's problems was to "abolish Bolivia and let its neighbors divide the country and its problems among themselves."

Time, a glossy weekly newsmagazine noted more for its Lucid views and artless covers than for its accuracy, loves Rupublicans and America, dislikes Democrats and Nasser, eschews conjunctions. Despite these shortcomings it is a rollicking, frolicking smashit in the rough, tough dog-eat-dog newsmagazine game, has huge advertising revenues, publishes several international editions. Publisher Henry Luce, a semi-literate Yaleman (his wife is femalegate to Brazil Clare Booth Luce), was "unavailable for comment" today as irate mobs hurled Bolivitriol at the U.S. embassy and Information Office in reaction to the latest piece of Timeddling.

The Time article, summing up seven years of Bolivian history in a column, pointed out that despite the "world's most comprehensive social security," Boliving standards remained quite low. The U.S. has benevolently chipped in $129 million Yankee dollars in aid during the past six years, but the same, still unidentified diplomouthpiece made a wry face, and said, "we don't have a damn thing to show for it; we're wasting money."

Response to the article (the quotation about "abolishing Bolivia" appeared only in the local Latin American edition) was swift and violent: La Paz got annoyed, students got riled up, President Hernan Siles Zuazo (in the drab, grey palace where he is guarded constantly by an unmanned machine gun) got worried, 10,000 copies of Time got burned, the American embassy got attacked. Summoned from Secretary Dulles' cloud chamber at Walter Reed Army Hospital, temporarisecretary Chris Herter, a genially proper Bostonian, expressed hope that "a magazine would not be permitted to disturb the traditionally good relations that have existed between our two countries and that the Bolivian Government officials would take all steps to avoid further incidents."

At day's end, the streets of cloudy La Paz (alt. still 11,900 ft.) were in a turmoil, American officials were reported in hiding near the capital, pre-peregrination of personnel by plane from La Paz. Meanwhile, lordly Luce was still "unavailable for comment" in his 40th-floor office in the Time-Life Building in Manhattan's monument to money, Rockefeller Center.