724.34119/1369½: Telegram
The President of the Junta of Government of Bolivia (Busch) to President Roosevelt
[Received 1:41 a.m.]
I have the honor to advise receipt of Your Excellency’s weighty telegram concerning the proposal which the Peace Conference will [Page 129] submit to the Governments of Bolivia and Paraguay for the definitive settlement of the Chaco controversy which, in Your Excellency’s view, is equitable and offers all possibilities of assuring an enduring peace and the national interests of the two parties. Your Excellency adds that the said formula is the result of the most careful study and impartial deliberation of the delegates of the mediating countries, that it has, furthermore, been produced by a broad exchange of views between the delegates of the Conference and the members of the Governments of Bolivia and Paraguay at La Paz and Asunción and that it represents, in short, a final effort to carry out one of the obligations assumed with the Protocol of June 12, 1935, signed under the auspices of the six mediating Governments, with which Governments the most excellent Government of the United States declares that it is entirely solidary in this action and that, lastly, as there is presented an opportunity to crown with success these negotiations, already long, there is a solemn obligation for all to hasten, in the most friendly and effective manner, the acceptance by the Governments of Bolivia and Paraguay, of the proposal referred to. I greatly appreciate and am grateful for Your Excellency’s message, as the Bolivian Government and people have always appreciated and been grateful for the noble cooperation of the Government of the United States, together with the other mediating nations, for the purpose of achieving a definitive settlement of the Chaco controversy that would consolidate peace in our hemisphere. I share Your Excellency’s conviction that both peoples desire to have the peace which they require for their development and progress and trusting in Your Excellency’s high justification and that of the most excellent Governments of the mediating countries, I hope that the proposal which may be submitted to us may be reasonable and equitable and may contain, as Your Excellency believes, all possibilities for the assurance of a durable and prosperous peace.
Please accept [etc.]