724.3415/4055: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Consul at Geneva (Gilbert)
87. Your 219, August 27, 5 p.m. Please take an early occasion to call on Avenol and thank him for a frank exposition of views on the League’s relation to the Chaco dispute.
[Page 72]It is probable that the Argentine representative has already communicated confidentially to Avenol the present status of the new conciliation formula49 which the United States, Argentina, and Brazil are now working on with Paraguay and Bolivia, and which gives real ground for hope. If the plan is accepted without reservation by the two interested parties, six other American Republics will be called in to cooperate in the conciliation discussions, with the added proviso that if this procedure is not ultimately successful, the dispute will be submitted to the Permanent Court of International Justice. With this set-up in prospect, we are distinctly apprehensive of the possibility of crossed wires in case an active Committee should now be set up by the League.
You may review briefly to Avenol the various evidences of full cooperation we have shown the League throughout the course of this dispute, notably at the time of the Montevideo Conference last winter. Our primary concern has been to help find a solution, whether through inter-American cooperation, or through the more universal international cooperation of the League. At the moment the prospects of success through the cooperative efforts of the United States, Argentina, and Brazil seem the brighter. You may accordingly tell Avenol, in strictest confidence, that we feel certain of a similar desire on his part to assist the more hopeful procedure in so far as he can do so consistently with the binding provisions of the Covenant. We therefore suggest that he may be able to evolve ways and means of restricting the activity of the League at this moment to a bare minimum.
In the circumstances, Avenol will understand why we feel it would be inadvisable for us to participate in the Committee he suggested.