Briand & Kellogg & Hanskundt

The staggering cost of cablegrams sent by the League of Nations in an effort to persuade Bolivia and Paraguay to stop fighting (TIME, Dec. 17 & 24) was found last week to total 130,000 Swiss gold francs or $26,000.

A queer quirk is that after Bolivia and Paraguay did cease firing last week, they turned for mediation not to the Council of the League--which had spent $26,000 on words--but to the Pan-American Conference on Arbitration and Conciliation at Washington.

Superficially this seemed to be score one for U. S. Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg, chairman of the Conference, over French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, chairman of the League Council. The makers of the Briand-Kellogg pact outlawing war appeared to be cast in the roles of rival peace makers. Actually Messrs. Briand and Kellogg divided honors last week, with the meticulous noblesse oblige of two medieval knights cooperating to split a dragon or a hair.

Carefully it was arranged that, although Bolivia and Paraguay would lay their troubles before the Conference, they should do so at the suggestion of the Council. Bolivian Foreign Minister Tomas Manuel Elio was induced to cable to M. Briand:

"I have the honor to inform Your Excellency that in accord with the lofty suggestion from the League Council that the Bolivian Government has accepted the good offices offered by the Conference for Conciliation and Arbitration meeting in Washington."

Since the U. S. is not a League member state, there next arose the delicate question of how Aristide Briand might properly convey the good news from Bolivia to Frank Billings Kellogg. As French Foreign Minister, M. Briand could have addressed Mr. Kellogg in his capacity of Secretary of State; but as chairman of the League Council, M. Briand could not so address him.

The Gordian Knot was cut when M. Briand summoned to his Paris office Norman Armour, Charge d'Affaires of the local U. S. embassy, and asked him to transmit a note from the League, not to Secretary of State Kellogg, but to Chairman Kellogg of the Pan-American Conference.

Charge d'Affaires Norman Armour pondered the proposition well, then announced that he would do as M. Briand wished, ''upon the distinct understanding that what is being asked is merely a courtesy."

When this pompous comedy had been played through, the Pan-American parley swiftly appointed a committee of five to investigate the original battle at Fort Vanguardia (TIME, Dec. 17).

The subsequent aggression of Bolivia against Paraguay was sonorously alibied, last week, by Bolivian delegate Diez de Medina, addressing the Conference in Washington.

Said the Bolivian delegate, in effect:

"If Nation A slaps Nation B, then B must slap A before A and B can patch up their quarrel without loss of honor."

This childish and preposterous theory was weightily expounded by Senor Medina thus:

"Bolivia can proudly hold up before all the nations of America its position as a pioneer in the practical and widest adoption of arbitration. . . .

"But this noble juridical principle must be applied to the prevention of armed conflicts between those who are upholding partial or contrary interests and not, certainly, to cover a posteriori acts of violence that society and international law jointly condemn today.

"For every offense, for every act of violence, a legitimate reparation should be forthcoming when the dignity and the sovereignty of a nation have been outraged. It does not seem possible that any country of the world would have stood for the humiliation and the affront and torn down its flag to have it replaced by the banner of arbitration."

Though German public opinion was in harmony with U. S. thought, last week, in blaming Bolivia most, the following highly significant editorial occurred in Berlin's Bocrsen Zeitung or Stock Exchange Times:

"The Bolivian army still wears the old colorful uniform of the Prussian army. General Hanskundt in 1911 reformed the Bolivian army. Today our Junkers flyers are instructors of the Bolivians. Junkers airplanes are flying over primeval forests and are a most effective instrument of combat due to a lack of roads. German business men and technicians are as welcome in Bolivia as German teachers. The German school founded in La Paz in 1924, now numbers 300 students. Just because Germans had such an active part in the growth of Bolivia we may wish Bolivia a speedy peaceful consolidation of her boundaries."