Starving Soldiers

COLOMBIA-PERU

Every few hours last week either the Government of Colombia or the Government of Peru would announce that a skirmish had been fought, a river gunboat bombed or an airplane shot at in the vicinity of Leticia, the remote, malarial jungle town on the upper Amazon ceded by Peru to Colombia in 1922, seized by Peruvian irregulars last September, squabbled over ever since (TIME, Feb. 6, 13).

Each stirring announcement was followed by a hot denial from the country supposed to have been injured. Brazil, the big neutral adjacent to Leticia, sent a commission to investigate the only victory that seemed authentic: Colombia's capture from Peru of the town of Tarapaca, 100 mi. north of Leticia. Boasting of this victory, Colombians claimed that "80 Peruvian soldiers fled from Tarapaca into the jungle where they are starving. Every few days a famished Peruvian comes out of the jungle and begs permission to surrender."

In Lima ten hours of explanation to Peru's Congress were necessary before the Government won a vote of confidence in its "scrap of paper" policy towards the treaty of 1922. In Bogota, the Government decreed military conscription (with exemption purchasable for 900 pesos--$860).

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