60
SECRET ARMIES
which arrived in Managua on January 12,
1938. Diplomatic representatives do not usually witness purely
business transactions, but this was a shipment worth $300,000
which the Italian Government knew Nicaragua could not pay.
But, as one of the results, Italy today has a firm foothold in the
country through which the United States hopes to build another
Canal. The international espionage underground world, which
knew that the shipment of arms was coming, has it that Japan,
Germany and Italy split the cost of the arms among themselves
to gain the friendship of the Nicaraguan Government.
A flood of Nazi propaganda sent on short-wave beams is
directed at Central and South America from Germany. In
Spanish, German, Portuguese and English, regular programs are
sent across at government expense. Government subsidized news
agencies flood the newspapers with "news dispatches" which they
sell at a nominal price or give away. The programs and the
and glorify the totalitarian form of
"news
dispatches" explain
and since many of the sister "republics" are dicta
government,
and receptive.
torships, they are ideologically sympathetic
The Nazis are strong in Colombia, south of the Canal, with a
Bund training regularly in military maneuvers at Cali. Since the
Japanese-Nazi pact, the Japanese have established a colony of
several hundred at Corinto in the Cauca Valley, thirty miles
from Cali.
The Japanese colony was settled on land carefully chosenlong, level, flat acres which overnight can be turned into an air
base for a fleet landed from an airplane carrier or assembled on
the delivery of arms
the spot. And it is near Cali that Alejandro Tujun, a Japanese
in constant touch with the Japanese Foreign Office, is at this
writing dickering for the purchase of 400,000 acres of level land
for "colonization." On such an acreage enough military men
could be colonized to give the United States a first-class headache
in time of war. It is two hours flying time from Cali to the Canal.