724.3415/1228

Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State (White) of Conversations With the Bolivian Minister (De Medina) and With the Paraguayan Chargé (Ynsfran)

In view of the articles appearing in today’s New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, publishing a statement issued by the Bolivian Minister regarding the dispute with Paraguay and the Paraguayan Chargé’s answer thereto, I asked the Bolivian Minister to call on me this afternoon.

At first there was a brief general discussion regarding the matter of the Chaco in which the Minister stated the readiness of his Government to endeavor now to settle this matter. I told him that I thought the present moment was the most propitious that has existed for many months, to which he agreed. I then told him that I was expressing merely my personal views but I thought it would be a great pity should anything be allowed to disturb this favorable atmosphere and that I was going to make the personal suggestion to him that it would be better and to the interest of all to avoid any newspaper discussion of the matter. The Minister said that he agreed fully; that he thought newspaper discussion was a great mistake and calculated to make the solution more difficult.

He then said that he would tell me how his statement arose. He had learned that in the Paraguayan note to the neutrals of April 20, last, the statement was made that Bolivia was advancing in the Chaco. He considered it his duty to advise his Government of this and, in reply, he had received categoric instructions to deny the statement, and that was the reason he had made his statement in the press. …

I told him that it is of course within his province to inform his Government of any information he got but that, in view of the fact that the note of Paraguay has not been made public, I frankly did not see the object of making a public statement regarding it. If he wished to inform the representatives here of the neutral Governments, that was one thing, but by making a public statement he was not answering anything that Paraguay had published but was taking the initiative in the press which had called forth the Paraguayan Chargé’s reply. The Minister replied that this was quite true but that he had followed instructions from his Government and while he did not agree with them, nevertheless, he had to act.

I inquired whether he cabled his Government the Paraguayan reply and he said that he had and that the Paraguayan Chargé was rather a nervous man who always went beyond the limit in his replies. I then expressed the very earnest hope that no reply would be made to the Paraguayan statement. The Minister said that he agreed and that [Page 724] he would this afternoon cable his Government saying that I had discussed the matter with him and that this was my view, in which he concurred. I told him I should be very glad to have him do so.

I then asked the Paraguayan Chargé to come in and discussed the matter with him. He said that he also was in hearty accord with my views in the matter; that he thought any publicity was unfortunate and unhelpful, but when the attack was made on his Government he had to answer or his Government would think that he was too lenient and was allowing his country to be made fun of. I said that sometimes it was more to a country’s advantage to leave such a statement unanswered in order not to give it any further significance or publicity than to answer it. I said that this Government often acted on that basis. He replied that that was quite all right for the United States because the United States is the United States, which means the largest and most powerful country in the world, occupying the whole continent. The weak, smaller countries, just because they are weak, are not serene enough to look at things in that way. He said that the Bolivian statement was wholly uncalled for but he hoped there would be no further polemics. Despite their personal friendship, he has had three such discussions with the Bolivian Minister in the New York Herald Tribune and La Prensa of New York. I told him that I had spoken with the Bolivian Minister and trusted that there would be no further statements. As he intimated that if there should be another statement from the Bolivian side he would have to answer it, I said I hoped very much that he would talk matters over with me before doing so in the hope that we might find some other way out in order to put an end to the discussion. He said that he would be glad to do so.

F[rancis] W[hite]