END OF HORROR

Taranaki Daily News, 7 September 1935, Page 18 (Supplement)

END OF HORROR

ANOTHER THREE-YEAR WAR. TERRIBLE PRICE FOR LAND. After three years of horror the war between Bolivia and Paraguay has ended, their Foreign Ministers having agreed to an armistice and begun to negotiate a peaceful solution of their boundary problem. It was arranged, when these Ministers met for the first time in the presence of mediators from Brazil and Argentina at Buenos Aires, that their respective armies should remain encamped where they were while representatives of Brazil and Argentina visited the disputed territory. A peace conference is to be held, under President Justo of Argentina, to ratify the results; or, if agreement cannot be reached at this meeting, the. questions at issue will be referred to The Hague Court. There is great hope, however, that the representatives of the warring States will make a settled peace in the presence of their friendly neighbours, reducing their armies to 5000 men, undertaking not to buy fresh armaments, and giving to each other a solemn pledge of non-aggression. It will be a happy issue out of a struggle without mercy which has appalled the whole world, fought through all these years for the possession of a few acres of land. Men who witnessed the horror of the European War 20 years ago, and have seen what has been happening in this uninhabitable stretch of country in the heart of South America called the Gran Chaco, declare that nothing in the history of mankind can have approached the awful conditions under which this war has been waged. Malaria has taken a terrible toll in life and suffering, and on both sides it was probably better to be killed outright than to be wounded. Tire cause of the war lay in the difficulty of Bolivia, rich in natural wealth of oil and minerals, in exporting her produce overseas. To the south, separating Paraguay from the forest area;of the Gran Chaco (which Bolivia claimed as her own), runs the River Paraguay, a means of communication to the South Atlantic. Bolivia wished to establish wharves on the western shores of that river, and the area she required lay between that river and the Pilcomayo, which continues south to form the frontier of Paraguay and Argentina. In 1929 Bolivia settled her southern boundary with Argentina by a treaty, but neither Bolivia nor Paraguay would agree about the continuation of that line eastward across the tropical forests of the Gran Chaco to the River Paraguay. Determined to extend their country to the river, tire 3,000,000 Bolivians enlisted German officers to train an army and equipped it with modern weapons from the factories of North America and Europe. This army advanced across the Chaco. Paraguay, with a population of about 800,000, had only a small army being trained by French officers, yet she took up the challenge and grimly resisted what she regarded as the invasion of her territory. . For three years has tire conflict raged, and it is believed that at least 50,000 men have died.