Family Peace Pact

A nice long table, with mother at one end and father at the other, is just right for a family of nations. Mother can wheedle, if little Miss Venezuela won't behave about her oil. Father can cough or threaten, if Master Bolivia kicks under the table again at Master Paraguay. Fortunately for the peace of the Americas, just such a family table stands perpetually in the white marble Pan-American Building, at Washington; and there, last week, mother and father dished up a piping dinner for all 20 republics. Of course the "family party" was really the Pan-American Conference on Arbitration and Conciliation (TIME, Dec. 17 et seq.). At mother's end of the table sat Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg, a kindly gentleman on the eve of retirement. Down at father's end of that table sat, of course, bewhiskered Charles Evans Hughes, undisputed "Daddy of them all."

Through a month of plenary sessions this seating was not changed. When Bolivia quarreled with Paraguay, mother, father and the whole family proceeded to squelch them both (see below). But even that rumpus did not spoil the party, did not prevent the delegates from negotiation and drafting two vital Peace Pacts.

Golden Pens. At the close of the Conference, last week, the Pacts were signed with august pomp. As gold pens scratched and Ambassador bowed to Ambassador, the parable of "mother, father and children" seemed to evaporate and vanish. In the iridescent words of President-Elect Herbert Hoover, uttered at Buenos Aires (TIME, Dec. 31): "There are no young, independent sovereign nations, there are no older and younger brothers of the American continent. All are of the same age from a political and spiritual viewpoint, and the only difference between them is the different historic moment in their economic progress. . . ."

Pact Facts. The Arbitration and Conciliation pacts signed, last week, are distinct and separate, as appears from their names: i) The General Treaty of Inter-American Arbitration; and 2) The General Convention of Inter-American Conciliation.

The famed phrase originally coined in the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact (TIME, July 30), is substantially repeated in the preamble of the Arbitration Pact wherein the signatories "condemn war as an instrument of national policy." But whereas the Kellogg-Briand Pact stops there, the Arbitration Pact of last week goes on to say that the signatories "adopt obligatory arbitration as the means for the settlement of their international differences. ..." This later pledge is the absolute heart and core of what was accomplished, last week, and is carefully elaborated in the treaty's nine articles, binding the nations firmly to arbitration.

The second or Conciliation Pact of last week binds the signatories to submit their differences--in advance of any open rupture or overt act requiring arbitration--to the good offices of one of two permanent Conciliation Commissions, established respectively in Montevideo, Uruguay, and at Washington, U. S. A. The Conciliation Pact runs to 16 articles and concludes:

"Any American State not a signatory of this Convention may adhere to the same by transmitting the official instrument setting forth such adherence to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Chile, which will notify the other high contracting parties thereof in the manner heretofore mentioned."

Thus Argentina, which sent no delegates to the Conference (TIME, Dec. 3) and did not sign the Pacts, last week, can later avail herself of the new machinery of conciliation by dropping a wire at any time to Santiago, Chile.

Bolivia-Paraguay. The squabble arising from bloody skirmishes between Bolivian and Paraguayan frontier troops was finally squelched, last week, when Delegates of both republics signed at Washington a special Protocol of Conciliation, setting up a board of nine judges to investigate, adjudicate.