Santiago, Chile, Feb. 2—The brand-new hotel here, in mid-season, has 23 guests today, which means that five hundred beds are empty. Tomorrow, sixty of them will be occupied by a Cuban delegation. “And they probably won’t pay their bill,” a young Chilean businessman, busily engaged in disengaging from Chile, remarked in his emptying office, the files packed up. phonograph records in cartons, as he mused on how he will raise the money to pay his debts—he has sold everything except his little beach cottage in the ten weeks since Salvador Allende was inaugurated as President, but there are no buyers. There are lots of beach cottages, and very little cash.
A professor, himself a Socialist, explained that for reasons he could not put his finger on, he had found himself early that morning pecking away at his own typewriter, instead of relying on his perfectly competent secretary, who would be at his service a few minutes later. Somehow he did not want to share what he had to say in that letter with someone whose sympathies were, in all matters, with the Allende government.
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