Paris Peace Conf. 723.2515/10
The Technical Advisers to the Commission to Negotiate Peace ( Scott , Miller ) to the Secretary of State
An expression of opinion is requested as regards the form of arbitration to be suggested and as to the countries from which the arbitrator or arbitrators of the dispute, presumably that between Chile and Peru concerning the status of Tacna and Arica, shall be chosen.
The correspondence submitted, herewith returned, does not give the facts of the incident at Iquique, the apparent cause of the present trouble. It shows, however, that the Department of State has offered its good offices, not formal mediation—although Peru appears to have considered the offer as such,—that the Department of State has informed both Chile and Peru that no formal offer of this kind was made, that the United States has suggested that the Tacna and Arica affair between the two countries be settled, and, finally, that it is of the highest importance that a dispute between the two countries should not result in an appeal to force at a time when so many nations are meeting in a peace conference.
In compliance with the request for an expression of opinion, the undersigned submit the following observations:
Tacna (including Arica) has a larger area than Massachusetts, with a population of 38,000, as against 3,300,000 for Massachusetts. Compared with Alsace-Lorraine, Tacna is half as large again (9,000 square miles and 5,600 square miles) with a population of about one-fiftieth of that of the French provinces (38,000 and 1,900,000).
Tacna is a mining district; it has substantially no agricultural interests; a great part, perhaps a majority of the population are mine laborers from Chile. The chief town, Tacna, has a population of say 12,000.
[Page 557]The population of Tacna, in 1895, or approximately at the time of the expiration of the ten-years period mentioned in the Treaty of 18835 was about 24,000.
It may well be argued that the question involved in the Tacna-Arica dispute is rather financial and territorial than one concerning the rights of peoples or one to which the principle of self-determination is relevant. Indeed the financial character of the question was recognized to some extent by both Chile and Peru in the Treaty of Ancon of 1883.
It should be added that Bolivia has acquired by treaty with Chile certain rights in the Tacna district and that these rights should and doubtless will be guarded and preserved in any final adjustment of the dispute between Chile and Peru.
The great concern of the United States seems to be to prevent, especially at the present time, a resort to force on the part of Chile and Peru, and for this reason proposes a settlement of the entire question between the two countries. In view, however, of the difficulty, the nature, the scope, and the extent of the controversy; the difficulty, greater, if possible, of framing the issues to be submitted and determining in its minutest details the procedure to be followed, the care to be exercised in the choice of the arbitrators if their decision is to be accepted by each of the litigant nations as a final settlement of the dispute, it is believed that some less comprehensive solution of the matter should be attempted at this time, inasmuch as the desideratum is not so much immediate settlement of the dispute as to prevent the outbreak of war.
The undersigned therefore venture the suggestion that the attention of Chile and Peru be called to the fact that each of them (as well as Bolivia) has concluded with the United States a Treaty for the Advancement of Peace,6 by virtue whereof they have pledged their good faith to submit their disputes to a Commission in Inquiry, and that during the session of such commission, which may be of a year’s duration, neither of the parties shall commit a hostile act or resort to war with the other. It is true that neither of these countries has concluded such a treaty with the other, but Chile negotiated such a convention with Argentina and Brazil. Admitting that such action on their part would not decide the question submitted, inasmuch as the report of the commission has only the effect which the countries may care to give it, it would preserve peace and would subject either the Iquique incident or the question of Tacna and Arica, or both, to a prolonged and ostensibly impartial investigation, leaving the two countries to take up and to consider the question of arbitration or final [Page 558] solution of the matter when the resentment produced by the Iquique incident should have passed.
The suggestion is frankly diplomatic, not judicial, inasmuch as the undersigned believe that diplomacy is better fitted to adjust the question in its present form than an award of an Arbitral Commission or the decision of an International Court of Justice.
- James Brown Scott
- David Hunter Miller
- Treaty of Ancon; for translation, see Foreign Relations, 1883, p. 731.↩
- Treaty with Bolivia, Jan. 22, 1914, Foreign Relations, 1915, p. 30; with Chile, July 24, 1914, ibid., 1916, p. 46; with Peru, July 14, 1914, ibid., 1915, p. 1279.↩