Images (13)
Document
| id |
id
75851675
|
|---|---|
| contentType |
contentType
document
|
| source |
source
import
|
Source image fields (6)
Extracted text
OCR Page 1 of 133/14/54: Reel 6, Track 1, Page 1
MR. ACHESON:
This room was a little less than half the size of the Secretary's room at
the State Department-not high ceilings, but the sort of ceilings that
they have in Continental buildings-and furnished, as I say, as a study
wi th upholstered chairs, a desk. There may have been a telephone in the
room--if there was, I didn't see it. No papers on the desk; no files
around; no accumulation of busy-ness at all. I'll talk about the meeting
wi th Salazar in a moment. I talked a good deal with Lincoln McVeigh about
the center of power and the nature of power in Portugal; and his view
of it, which I have no reason to doubt is correct, is a very interesting
one and one which I think throws a good deal of light on the type of
iN
and
reging, which seems to me to differ very much from the regimes of personal
the
Us
any
power which we were used to in Italy and Germany and Russia. The real
center of power in Portugal, as I understand it, lies with the army. The
army really controls who shall operate the government. The President of
Portugal is selected by the army and is an army of ficer. Twenty years
ago, after one revolution per year since about 1907 and very great
difficulty with the Portuguese economy, Salazar, then a professor in a
university in the North, was asked to come down and be the economic czar
of Portugal. He asked for certain powers, which were not given him.
A particular one was control over the army budget; that was not given him,
and therefore he rejected this and went on back to his university. Later
on he came back and was given these powers. He, I believe, runs with
complete authority, Portugal-in the interest of the army and the middle
class, from which the army gets its power. If there were a showdown, so-
called, between the army and Salazar, I think there is no doubt in any-
one's mind that the army would come out on top. There isn't any, because
they work this thing quite harmoniously. His views are certainly not
democratic or libertarian in any way; but on the other hand they are not
coercive in the sense of exercising violence on people. I think one of
his prides is that he has never hurt anyone, which is perhaps a mild
Relations
belongs_to
belongs_to