724.3415/2109: Telegram
The Minister in Paraguay (Wheeler) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 20—7:20 a.m.]
93. Your telegram 34, August 18, 2 p.m. General Staff, on account of Bolivian attack on Caraya, tonight definitely refuse to favor alternative suggestion. The four fortines taken from the Caraya are posts established for the protection of the Mennonite Colony and the railroad and the attack on Caraya has convinced them that the Bolivian intention is to seize the Colony and that this will be attempted before such provisions could be applied. The Caraya fight is believed to have been much more serious than is officially admitted here.
The situation in short is this: There are practically only four spheres of conflict, first, the Pilcomayo line, second, the line of Nanawa and Concepción, third, the line of Puerto Casada and, fourth, the line of Bahía Negra. The first is not considered dangerous on account of the difficulty of moving large bodies of troops in the present season. On the second, Bolivian attack could occur but Paraguayan retreat could not be followed on account of impossible swamps. The fourth is now flooded and can be disregarded. It is the third that is Paraguay’s weak point. It includes the Mennonite Colony and the railroad and must be protected. While Bolivia could [Page 73] not use the railway through lack of rolling stock its system of roads to the river make it easy of invasion and it is only here that Bolivia could operate forces of more than 10,000 men. The mutual retirement plan which the President and I have been working on with the head of the General Staff considered only this line. The plan embraced immediate evacuation of the Paraguayan fortines Toledo, Corrales, Boquerón and Cacique Ramón and the Bolivian fortines Arce and two others in that sector, none of these to be reoccupied by either side, Paraguay to be permitted police force of say 50 soldiers, whose number could be determined by the neutrals, to continue protection of the Colony and railroad.
The war fever has been steadily growing here and mobilization is being rapidly completed. I have just left the President who is clearly hopeless that war can be averted unless the neutrals can bring about Bolivian retirement from the four captured fortines. He said to me “If I opposed the Army further I should have no army”.
He showed me a telegram received on the 18th reporting a conversation between Bustamente and the Peruvian Ambassador in Buenos Aires wherein Bustamente had stated that Bolivia would accept no proposal for truce before she knew the bases of the prospective arbitration, which Ayala takes as indicating a knowledge of her intention to demand as a sine qua non a footing on the river. The Ambassador replied that the two matters should be considered apart from one another.
Today’s Liberal publishes a caustic statement of Vasconsello’s, evidently issued for political effect, in which he pictures the neutrals as determined to keep peace at whatever cost to either disputant, declaring “till now we have supported the situation of the weaker nation and as such binding the object of the neutrals’ pressure to cause us to yield in homage to peace. This situation does not suit us, and we hope this time to show the world that Paraguay is a nation strong when the defense of her honor and the support of her rights are concerned”.