TEARFUL SCENES

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 139, 14 June 1935, Page 7

TEARFUL SCENES

BITTER WAR ENDS.

-Peace After Three Years of Jungle Battles. OVER 100,000 KILLED. (United P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Received 0.30 a.m.) BUENOS AYRES, June 13. Affecting scenes were witnessed at the signing yesterday of a truce protocol establishing peace in the Gran Chaco. The signing ceremony took place at the palace of the President of Argentina. Senora Elio, Bolivian Foreign Minister, who has four sons at the front, and Senora Eiart, Paraguayan Foreign Minister, who has three sons there, embraced tearfully amid general handshaking and congratulations.

Last night every capital in South America was en fete in celebration of the end of the long, bitter and sanguinary war. The celebrations reached the peak of delirium in the Paraguayan and Bolivian capitals, Asuncion and La Paz.

The glad news was flashed to the weary troops in the Gran Chaco, where they face only 48 more hours of the peril which has sent more than 100,000 of their brothers to death in the past three years of jungle warfare.

Seventeen previous efforts at mediation and conciliation between the combatant Powers had failed to end this, the greatest conflict in the western hemisphere since the American Civil War.

The Pope sent a message to the Government of Bolivia and Paraguay expressing his relief at the cessation of hostilities and giving his blessing.