The Stamp Club

Southland Times, Issue 20664, 20 April 1929, Page 22

The Stamp Club

STATE PROPAGANDA

VALUE OF STAMPS. The postage stamp has many times played a part in the service of diplomacy. Over t-hirty years ago Venezuela set out her case in the celebrated boundary dispute on the set of map stamps issued in 1896 ostensibly to commemorate the Venezuelan liberator, Francisco Miranda. Nicaraguan stamps depicting an active volcano were produced in the United States Senate to turn the scale in favour of the Panama route for the canal. Many other instances of stamps being used for propaganda in international disputes are familiar to collectors. For years Peru has been keeping her claims in the Tacna-Arica dispute prominent on her stamps. “Arica-el-ultimo cartucho (“the last cartridge”) is the inscription on- the 2-soles stamp of 1918, depicting the battle of Arica. Since 1925 so-called patriotic stamps have been issued in connection with the plebiscite showing the Peruvian flag flying on thhe promontory known as the Morro of Arica, officers saluting the Peruvian flag, and a statue to General Francisco Bolognesi, the defender of Arica in the Chile-Peru war. BOLIVIA AND PARAGUAY.

The Tacna-Arica dispute is now reported to be. ended, the province of Tacna going to Peru, and the port of Arica to Chile. But there is another dispute being waged in stamps between Bolivia and Paraguay over the Chaco. It will be remembered that the quarrel between these two countries nearly came to war in December last. Bolivia’s stamps have long exhibited her ambition of securing an outlet to the sea, witness the ferocious vulture on the 25-cen-tavos of 1925 with the motto “hacia el mar” (“towards the sea”). The bird was turned towards the Pacific, but on the latest 5c green the- “Condor of the Andes” is turned in the other direction and the motto is omitted. The Chaco would give Bolivia an outlet to the Atlantic on the Paraguay River. Paraguay was the first in the field with stamps tn the present dispute. The 1,2, and 3 peso stamps of 1924 showed a rough map representing Paraguay and her neighbours, but a later version of the 1.50 peso redbrown of 1927 makes its purpose more plain, for on this Paraguay is shaded and “Chaco Paraguayo” is in the ehaded portion. Bolivia has replied by producing a