Precaution

Paraguay, which year ago withdrew from the League of Nations, last week sent word to Geneva that it was also resigning membership in the Permanent Court of International Justice, located at The Hague. No official explanation was attached but Paraguay's plain purpose was to prevent Bolivia from hauling the still-unsettled Gran Chaco dispute before that tribunal. Both nations signed an optional clause in the World Court protocol and statutes which provided that if one nation wished to bring a case into court, the other signatory nation involved was bound to submit to its jurisdiction. Bolivia is still a member of The Hague body, and of the League, and as such, if Paraguay had not reneged, could have requested the court to pass on the Chaco claims.

Three years ago an armistice halted the war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the Gran Chaco, a dank jungle region sandwiched between the two nations, over which they have been squabbling for a century. Almost constant negotiations by neutral powers since the armistice have brought the dispute no nearer settlement. Fortnight ago the Chaco Peace Conference in Buenos Aires, composed of representatives of the U. S., Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile and Uruguay, offered a solution which would have given landlocked Bolivia a port on the Paraguay river, and thus an outlet to the sea, Bolivia's main interest in having a slice of the Chaco. Paraguay flatly rejected it. "The Bolivian flag cannot fly over a port on the river bearing the name Paraguay," groused Paraguay's 75-year-old Foreign Minister Dr. Cecilio Baez to the conference. He refused to budge even after the delegates reminded him that Brazilian and Argentine flags float over ports on the same river before & after it courses through Paraguay. Last week the arbitrating powers, fearful lest fighting flare up again, rushed military observers to posts in the disputed territory.

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