723.2515/814: Telegram

The Ambassador in Chile ( Collier ) to the Secretary of State

[Paraphrase]

8. Immediately after handing me the formal acceptance of President Harding’s invitation, the Minister of Foreign Affairs handed me the following note, headed “strictly confidential”:

“In accord with the ideas exchanged in Washington between the Under Secretary, Mr. Fletcher, and the Chilean Ambassador, Mr. Mathieu, upon this subject,95 I have the honor, by means of the present communication, to express to Your Excellency in a form strictly confidential and complementary to my note number 116 of this date,96 that my Government considers the Treaty of Peace of 1883 between Chile and Peru to be in force in all its parts, and unchangeable. In the conversation I held with Your Excellency January 17 of this year, you, as the authorized medium, gave me the confirmation that that is the spirit and the thought embodied in the message that is the subject of Your Excellency’s note of January 18; an opinion that the Secretary of State, Mr. Hughes, also expressed to the Chilean Ambassador in Washington in a conversation December 28, 1921.97

[Page 452]

“This understanding is the basis and fundamental standard for Chile’s negotiations with Peru in Washington, in conformity with the friendly suggestion of Your Excellency’s Government.

“In the event that in the course of the negotiations effort be made to distort the spirit in which Chile has agreed to enter into them, or to assert in any form whatever the total or partial nullity of the Treaty of Ancon, my Government desires to have put on record formally and expressly with Your Excellency’s Government the understanding that is set forth above. Barros Jarpa, Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs.”

In my conversation yesterday98 with the Minister of Foreign Affairs to which he refers, I was sounding him as to whether the invitation would be accepted, and His Excellency asked if the treaty was to be rejected. I replied that in the proposed invitation the reference to the unfulfilled provisions of the treaty seemed to indicate that its existence was assumed, but that infractions and unfulfilled provisions of the treaty would undoubtedly be within the scope of the arbitration. I made specific reference to Peru’s charges that the rights of Peruvian citizens were being forsworn. I gave this as my personal view, stating that I had no authority to bind my Government to an interpretation. I relied in so doing on the confidential instruction in your number 2, January 13, which, however, I did not reveal.

Collier
  1. See memoranda of Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, 1921, by the Under Secretary of State, Foreign Relations, 1921, vol. i, pp. 243 and 244, respectively.
  2. Quoted in the Ambassador’s telegram of Jan. 19, 1922, 8 p.m., supra.
  3. No record of conversation found in Department files.
  4. Evidently refers to conversation of Jan. 17.