724.3415/290: Telegram
The Chargé in France (Armour) to the Secretary of State
419. Minister for Foreign Affairs summoned me to the Foreign Office this afternoon and informed me that as President of the Council of the League of Nations he wished our Government to be thoroughly conversant of everything that had been done up to the present by the Council of the League in endeavoring to settle the differences between Paraguay and Bolivia.
For this purpose he handed to me the correspondence exchanged between the President of the Council and the Paraguayan and Bolivian Ministers. These documents consist of the following:
[Here follows a list of 14 documents. For the texts, see League of Nations, Documentation Concerning the Dispute Between Bolivia and Paraguay (C. 619.M.195.1928.VII), sections 3 to 15, pages 3–11.]
As I am forwarding the only copies I have of these documents by the pouch which is just closing I have only been able to glance hastily at them. I imagine however that the Department is aware of their content if not their full text with perhaps the exception of documents numbers 13 and 14 which are of the most immediate interest.70 Number 13 is Bolivia’s reply to M. Briand informing him that the Bolivian Government has given orders to the chiefs of military posts to abstain from any advance or attack and to confine themselves to defensive measures. Document number 14 is the Paraguayan reply [Page 699] and reiterates Paraguay’s acceptance of the good offices of the Pan American Conference of Arbitration.
With these documents M. Briand handed me an unsigned memorandum headed “League of Nations” and dated Paris, December 18, 1928, a translation of which follows:
“If, in the very next days, the two Governments do not accept, under one form or another, a mediation which will allow of foregoing the regulation by specific means71 of the demand for reparations presented by the Bolivian Government and consequently excluding the possibility of new acts of hostility, the Council will find it difficult to avoid holding an extraordinary session, in fact it will be obliged to study the measures which it will be necessary to take either because war will have begun—or because it will be on the point of breaking out—between two Members of the League of Nations each of which seems to recognize no other mutual contractual obligation not to resort to war than the one resulting from the Covenant of the League of Nations by which they are equally bound.
The Council believes it to be true that in two directions, with high authority, efforts are now being put forth with a view to avoiding war and to solving by specific means existing difficulties. It is in this sense that the Argentine Government and the Pan American Arbitration Conference, now meeting at Washington under the Presidency of the Secretary of State of the United States, are acting. However, the Council has not received any official information from either.
The Argentine Government and the Governments represented at the Pan-American Conference are at the present moment completely informed as to the steps taken by the Council and the answers of the Governments of the two countries. In the interests of peace it seems essential in the eyes of the Council to coordinate perfectly the efforts of all those who are endeavoring to obtain a settlement of the controversy by specific [pacific] means.
For these reasons the President of the Council of the League of Nations, charged by the Council with following the development of the controversy, would consider it of the highest importance for the preservation of peace—the supreme goal which all must pursue—that the Government of the United States should be good enough to inform him as to its views with respect to the best measures to be taken by all those who are endeavoring to insure a specific [pacific] settlement of the controversy.”
It was explained to me that the last paragraph asking for the views of “the Government of the United States” means our Government in its capacity as furnishing the President of the Pan-American Conference.
I was told that the Argentine Ambassador was handed an identical communication and also that the Paraguayan and Bolivian representatives had been respectively furnished with a copy of documents 13 [Page 700] and 14, supra. [Paraphrase.] The press has not been informed regarding the unsigned covering memorandum. The Foreign Office feared that it might be construed as a diplomatic note; whereas it was stressed that the communication of Briand had merely been recorded in this form because it afforded the surest means of avoiding any crossing of wires and at the same time elicited the fullest exchange of views in order to arrive at the end which was sought in common by all of the mediating agencies. [End paraphrase.]