724.3415/2090 2/14
Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State (White)
The Argentine Ambassador called this morning and said he had been asked by his Government to cable the full text of the Neutrals’ telegram of the seventeenth to Bolivia.47 I told him that I was sending him a copy. Mr. Espil said he understood that the press had carried the cable, in which event he would simply refer to the text as transmitted by the press. I told him I was advised that the United Press had carried the cable in full.
Mr. Espil then said that he had been asked by Mr. Saavedra Lamas to inquire why the words “de este controversia” had been put in the [Page 183] joint telegram of August 3 and how they were to be interpreted. (This should definitely dispose of any claim on the part of Saavedra Lamas to having been the author of the declaration of August 3).
I told Mr. Espil that these words were naturally put in because Bolivia and Paraguay were fighting and the Neutrals, in drafting the cable, had wanted the other Governments to associate themselves with us in telling the Bolivians and Paraguayans that they should cease fighting at once and to make it clear to them that if they did not we would not recognize any territorial conquest which either side might make. In other words, putting in these words indicated that the doctrine was applicable to the present incidents in the Chaco and to any controversies that may arise anywhere in this hemisphere in the future.
I also told him, for his confidential information, that when I was asked at the meeting on July 30 just before we adjourned for lunch to draft the declaration, the Colombian Minister had said to me, with reference to my statement in the meeting that we should put some teeth in our declaration by saying that we would not recognize any territorial conquest, that he was afraid that on account of Chile having taken Bolivia’s seacoast from her we would have to be very careful how we worded the statement or else the Chileans would not join in with us; fearing that it would give Bolivia a chance to reopen that old question. I had told the Colombian Minister that I would take care of this. Therefore, although there was no such qualifying clause in the draft which I had been working on ever since Paraguay started to withdraw from the conference, I put in the words “of this controversy” in order to reassure Chile that there was nothing retroactive in the declaration. I had also put in the words “en estos momentos” after the word “obtenidas” in the last paragraph of the declaration. I said that Chile had been willing to go further than I thought and had asked that “en estos momentos” be changed either to “en el Chaco” or else deleted, and that Mr. Espil would recall that when I had discussed the matter with him he had said that he would have to consult his Government about substituting the words “en el Chaco” but had agreed to eliminating the words “en estos momentos”, which made the doctrine more sweeping and more in accordance with what I had originally planned.
I also pointed out to Mr. Espil that in the Neutrals’ telegram to Bolivia of August 17 we explained the use of these words as showing that the Neutrals were not giving a retroactive interpretation to the doctrine of August 3 but that that declaration itself specifically said that it referred to the present conflict.