Senseless Slaughter

Fingering his carefully chosen tie, Europe's best groomed diplomat. Captain Anthony Eden, Lord Privy Seal of Britain, arose last week to address the League of Nations Council, assembled after four months recess.

At hand was the elaborate report of a special League Commission which, after weeks of slogging through the steamy jungle of the Gran Chaco, had dismally failed to settle the two-year-old war between Paraguay and Bolivia. To the outside world that failure had been just one more body blow to the League's reputation as a peacemaker. Not since it was founded was the League's prestige at a lower ebb. Japan and Germany had thumbed their noses, given notice of withdrawal. The Disarmament Conference was dead before it reassembled. Something had to be done. Captain Eden turned hopefully to the Chaco battlefields.

"Let me call attention," said he, "to the Commission's observations that though neither Paraguay nor Bolivia produces any arms or any considerable amount of war material, both continue to obtain arms and war material without any difficulty. Such arms are not manufactured locally but are supplied to the belligerents by American and European countries.

"Britain . . . therefore asks the Council to send telegrams at once to the governments whose co-operation is necessary to enforce an arms embargo.

"The senseless loss of life, the utterly unjustifiable imposition of human suffering and the meaningless destruction of the best resources in men and material of these two countries have already endured far too long. I do most wholeheartedly urge the Council to seize this opportunity of bringing them to an end. . . ."

French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou was on his feet instantly seconding the motion.

"The time now has come," he cried, "to show that the League is not merely a place where abstract resolutions are passed and not followed by effective action, but that means can be applied when necessary."

Day before the Eden speech was delivered in Geneva, solid Stanley Baldwin rose in the House of Commons to say:

"I should like to recapitulate the history of the proposal for an arms embargo. It was on the initiative of the British Government that an exchange of views took place originally more than a year ago, between the Governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Italy, with a view to an agreement between them prohibiting the export of arms to Bolivia and Paraguay. . . .

"A number of states made their acceptance subject to acceptance of the declaration by a specific number of other states, including the United States. The Government of the latter country, however, stated they were unable to impose an embargo until necessary legislation was passed by Congress, and no such legislation was passed."

Washington, Not without the secret approval of the Roosevelt Administration was the buck so neatly passed to the U. S. President Hoover had earnestly tried to halt the shipment of arms to the Chaco. Then in April 1933 the House had passed an Administration resolution authorizing the President to impose an arms embargo on any aggressor nation anywhere in the world. When the resolution reached the Senate broad-beamed Hiram Johnson had it amended to apply to both sides in a fight, on the theory that a one-sided embargo would be more likely to draw the U. S. into a war than to keep her out. The amended resolution passed the Senate last February, is now waiting action by the House. While Congressional ears were still tingling from Stanley Baldwin's charges, President Roosevelt's tactics were to send a special message to the Senate urging that it act as rapidly as possible on the 1925 Geneva convention which provides for supervision of the international munitions traffic by a system of licenses and quotas. He further expressed the hope that the Disarmament Conference will agree upon a "much more far-reaching" arms control than the mere supervision provided in the 1925 convention. In addition an emergency Administration resolution was introduced in the Senate authorizing the President to embargo the sale of U. S. arms and munitions in the Chaco conflict. A $10,000 fine or two years in jail was made the penalty for violating the embargo. Other Countries stepped into line. Chile, who had just received disturbing news that many of her own retired army officers were being recruited at handsome pay to serve in the Bolivian army, promptly agreed to join the embargo. Argentina righteously insisted that she has always forbidden transshipment of arms to the Chaco. Spain, Holland and Australia joined up. Italy announced that she would, if all the rest did. Czechoslovakia, in which is the great Skoda munitions factory, issued a confused statement that was generally regarded as an acceptance.

Figures. Meanwhile in London and in Washington the first official figures on recent munitions shipments emerged. Amounts seemed unusually modest. President Walter Runciman of the British Board of Trade announced that between November 1933 and March 1934, Bolivia had bought 101 machine guns, 85 wheels for mountain artillery, various other odds & ends. Paraguay bought 5,000,000 rifle cartridges. Peru, which last week agreed to drop its impending war with Colombia over the Leticia territory (TIME, Feb. 6, 1933-et seq.) had laid in 1,200 three-inch shells, eight rangefinders and a few cases of machine gun cartridges. Further to impress his adversary Yahya the Imam of Yemen. King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia had just put in an order for 2,000,000 British rifle cartridges.

Washington's figures were more indefinite, but the Department of Commerce announced that during 1933 and the first three months of 1934 Bolivia and Paraguay had bought munitions to the following values:

Bolivia Revolvers & pistols $ 541 Shotguns 676 Metallic cartridges 181,885 Machine and heavy guns 70,302 Aircraft 148,990 Aircraft engines 86,566 Trucks & busses 605,601

Paraguay Machine guns & cannon $ 91,900 Ammunition including fireworks 4,655 Parachutes & parts 2,100 Revolvers 63 Trucks & busses 171,472

Blowoff. All this world activity in the name of peace was not lost on the fighters in the Chaco. If two years of bloody combat that has already cost nearly 45,000 lives was to end for lack of fighting material generals on both sides decided that they could have one last glorious blowoff. That last week they had.

On a 20-mile front centering on strategic Fort Ballivian, Bolivian headquarters on the Pilcomayo River, every man, every gun and cartridge that either side could mobilize was gathered for one deciding battle. Some 50,000 bloodthirsty Paraguayans were attacking about 60,000 dogged Bolivians. Should Paraguay break through, she will win not only the Fort, but the best motor road in all South America, leading straight into Bolivia's rich Villa Monies oilfields. Paraguayan cavalry columns moved northeast in an effort to outflank the Fort and all night long the sky was yellow with shellfire, while swaying ambulances going back passed heavy munitions trucks moving up.

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