724.3415/1298: Telegram
The Minister in Bolivia (Feely) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received 6 p.m.]
84. The following note was received today at 10:15 a.m. from the Foreign Office:
“My Government has noted with deferential interest your courteous communication in which the governments of the neutral countries which intervened in the settlement of the incident provoked by Paraguayan aggression in December 1928, have reiterated their offer of good offices to participate in an amicable settlement of the Chaco question. Your Excellency’s note of June 25, 1931, after making a summary of the antecedents of these negotiations, terminates in substance by inquiring ‘if the Bolivian Government would be disposed to authorize its diplomatic representative in Washington to enter into negotiations regarding the settlement of the outstanding territorial and frontier difficulties in the Chaco’.
The Bolivian Government reiterates its profound thanks to Your Excellency’s Government for the noble efforts it has been putting forth in support of a pacific solution of the question and confirms its conditional acceptance of the good offices proffered by the Governments of the United States, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay, as contained in its notes of November 13th, 1929, and February 25th, 1930. [Page 749] In ratifying its invariable adherence to juridical principles, in the solution of international conflicts, it declares at the same time, that it will spare no effort to arrive at a just settlement which shall put an end to the territorial controversy in which it is involved with Paraguay.
The experience derived from the Buenos Aires Conference, which was undertaken as the result of the good offices of the Argentine Government, and in which Paraguay diverted the purpose contemplated by the protocol that originated the good offices, has demonstrated the futility of persisting in negotiations that are without a definite basis which shall be capable of serving as a foundation for diplomatic discussion. My Government believes that having previously proposed the initiation of direct conversations in La Paz or in Asunción looking toward a more exact definition of the basic question, or in case of need toward the formulation of prior bases which would necessarily be established opportunely by the interested parties for the purpose of arriving at such a definition, there would be no object in carrying on conversations in another place where the same difficulties would surely repeat themselves as were met with in the Buenos Aires Conference and in the Conference of Inquiry and Conciliation in Washington, in both of which it was found impossible to reach any agreement in spite [of] the good will of the mediators.
The Bolivian Government in consonance with its established criterion as to the best method of solving or directing the course of the territorial dispute, as already expressed on former occasions and reiterated in the [this] note, is pleased to state that if those negotiations should not have the desired result, the moment would then have arrived to have recourse to the good offices proffered by [the] neutral governments.
In that event the Bolivian Government considers it advisable to reiterate the most essential of the declarations made in its said note of November 13th, 1929, in the sense that it does not find itself disposed to accept arbitration involving an indeterminate parcel of the national territory, nor to submit to a prior arbitration of [prior arbitrage] the determination of the territory that is to be the subject of arbitration, obliged as both countries are to respect the provisions of the protocol of April 22, 1927.
When the opportunity shall have arrived to give course to the good offices, my Government understands that an agreement must be made in which shall be established the norms and extent of this procedure, because any indeterminate action would be inefficacious, as has been the case on other occasions.
Before concluding, I take pleasure in informing Your Excellency that my Government in accordance with its invariably pacific attitude would be disposed to study immediately a pact of nonaggression in the Chaco, of such a nature as to guarantee internal [international] peace and tranquility, with the purpose of entering into negotiations that would carry the territorial controversy to an equitable and definite [definitive] ending under the auspices of a procedure propitious to a pacific settlement.”
I am handing copies of this note to the representatives of the neutral governments here.