Sir: It was wise to quote the letter of an
Anglo-Argentine lady without comment (Notebook, 26 June). The comment might have been intemperate, which this writer is fighting not to be.
My connection with Argentina has been long, if interrupted, ever since I got my first
job on the Buenos Aires Herald in 1923. I am therefore quite familiar with the work- ings of the Argentinian mind that brands the British as a pirate people because Fran- cis Drake, 400 years ago, robbed the Spaniards of the gold that was not theirs in the first place.
Again, having lived through (and served in) the 1914-18 War as the son of German- born parents, I fully sympathise with the zeal of the convert, the Anglo-Portena, to show every loyalty to the land of her adop- tion.
Even so the reasoning of this lady reminds me of that of another Spectator writer who gauged Argentinian opinion from what he heard in Florida. He might have got a rather different reaction had he penetrated into the Bocao.
First, much stress is laid on the bloodless seizure of the Falklands (British since 1770 and very glad to be so). Hitler used that argument about the rape of Austria and Denmark. The Argentinian departure could also have been bloodless had her troops withdrawn when called upon by the Securi- ty Council of the United Nations. But at home one gathers (reading between the lines of the Prensa) the junta has been rather less bloodless. As, however, it was a question of 1,000 troops against 80 marines (ten of them unarmed) it is not surprising that the operation should have been bloodless. There were only 80 marines on the island because the Argentinian action was not what one expects of a civilised country and I take it Argentina is still civilised, as it cer- tainly was when I queued for tickets at the Colon in the halcyon days of President Alvear.
But finally, and this is the nub, could any Argentinian have read the British case in any publication in the eloquent manner in which this lady has put the Argentinian case (and without comment!) in the Spectator? If so, where? If not, can this lady or any of her new compatriots judge aright from one side of the question?
George Edinger
London WC I
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