Malcolm Deas

Most recent books in English on Argentine history are on economic history. On looking them over, readers who are not economic historians will probably reach the same conclusion as did J.O.P. Bland (better-known as the unwitting partner of the forger Sir Edmund Backhouse, the ‘Hermit of Peking’) after conscientiously preparing himself for a visit to the River Plate in 1916: ‘From the library catalogue point of view, the subject might well seem to have been exhausted … Yet how few there be amongst all these works (as some of us know to our cost) that properly and worthily inculcate the profitable exercise of travel … Say what you will, the great majority of them are so dreadfully infected with stodgy commercialism, so monumentally useful, that their general effect upon the mind (unless it be the mind of a bagman) can only be compared to a surfeit of suet pudding.’

I like to regard people both making it and smoking it not only as a sort of friendship, but as a vast domain of democracy wherein we find gathered people of every class and race and creed, having in pipe or plug or cigar or cigarette, a bond of sympathetic understanding and a contact of common interest and good fellowship. I like to contemplate the business of producing and the pleasure of consuming this exalted plant as really a realm peopled by congenial spirits and ruled only by those kindlier human emotions which the smoke of these fragrant leaves kindles in the heart of man …

Territorial disputes are, in the Spanish phrase, matters de mucha teologia. These matters of much theology can easily cause violence; short statements about them are nearly always wrong; intensive study of individual problems can drive you round the bend. Experts in public international law, like theologians, frequently disagree, and like theologians they are not at all immune to national bias. There is also usually much mist surrounding what they are trying to get at. Arguments are frequently both inconclusive and unrewarding. Most editors in recent months avoided going into the background of the Falklands dispute in any detail – it would have taken up too much space. If one had to go into it at all, it was best to be brisk and muscular about it. On page 6 of Chatham House’s ‘Special’ The Falkland Islands Dispute – International Dimensions Professor James Fawcett agrees on line 3 that ‘the determination of territorial title, when it is disputed, is a complex issue of fact and law,’ and asserts on line 31 that ‘the territorial title to the islands… must be accorded to the United Kingdom.’ On this issue our public legal opinions have always been… robust.

Knowing something of Argentina gives one no privileged insight, on 18 April 1982, into what should be done; it does give one a stronger desire to avoid a war, and a different awareness of some of the issues. Whatever happens to ships or governments, countries do not sink.

Jacobo Timerman was formerly a Buenos Aires newspaper proprietor and editor. He was arrested in April 1977, tortured and held for two years in unofficial and official jails, and finally under house arrest. With the publication of his book Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, the caso Timerman has become a cause célèbre in the United States as well as in Argentina.