Argentina’s foreign policy during World War II is often believed to have been one of indifferent, or even pro-Axis, neutrality from the very onset of hostilities in Europe. Passions aroused by the Axis leanings of the government leaders during most of the period of American belligerency have tended to obscure the fact that the attitude of the Argentine government during the period preceding the fall of France was unquestionably favorable to the Allies. Previous writers have neglected this period, and have tended to skip directly from the Panama Conference in September, 1939, to the capitulation of France, following which Argentina adopted a policy of strict neutrality, and thus have given the erroneous impression that Argentina’s position on hemispheric neutrality was the same throughout the war.

In Latin America in the twentieth century, nation after nation has revised its concepts of constitutional law to take into account the whole new realm of state responsibility for the economic and social welfare of its citizens. Beginning most dramatically with the Mexican Constitution of 1917, Latin American states have written into their constitutional charters detailed chapters on the social responsibility of capital, the economic rights of the worker, and the state responsibility for the protection and security of the family and for the physical and mental welfare of all its citizens and classes. In rewriting their national constitutions, the Latin Americans have deliberately broken with the classic liberal constitutionalism of the nineteenth century and adopted what some have called a “social constitutionalist” position.

In May 12, 1793, a tall handsome Spanish American strode quickly and confidently into the old Paris Parlement chamber, escorted by an usher, and followed by most eyes in the buzzing room. As he approached his place his eyes very likely met those of Danton, seated in the courtroom, for Danton, the real head of the Committee of Public Safety, was present and, although unable at the time for political reasons to show public sympathy for the Spanish American, was his friend.

A Young Irishman from Cork was among those who answered a call sent out by Luis López Méndez, Venezuela’s agent in London, for foreign volunteers to join the patriot forces in their efforts to win independence from Spain. Though such enlistments were expressly forbidden by the British government, it would seem that little effort was made to stop them, for we know that several thousand Englishmen and Irishmen volunteered for service over a period of a few years. So it was that on December 3, 1817, Daniel Florence O’Leary left Portsmouth on board the corvette Prince, bound for the New World. What was it that led O’Leary to leave family and home at the rather tender age of seventeen? Was it the desire for adventure and excitement in an unknown land where a war was being waged or was it because the economic crisis in the British Isles after the Napoleonic wars gave an enterprising young man little hope of forging a successful career for himself? It is difficult to assess his motives at that time, but there seems to be no doubt that he felt strongly attracted by this struggle for freedom going on across the seas, all the more so because he came from a land where the Act of Union decreed by the British government in 1800 had ended the limited autonomy granted the people two decades earlier and had re-established many of the intolerable restrictions previously in force. It seems very likely, too, that the young adventurer had been influenced in his decision by the great champion of Irish rights, Daniel O'Connell, a family friend, who followed with keen interest the struggle for freedom and became a fervent admirer of Bolivar, even to the point of offering the latter the services of his son.