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Campaigns. Starting fast in 1932, the Paraguayans, under French-trained General Jose Estigarribia, slogged victoriously across the jungle Chaco to a Bolivian keypoint, a hut on a hummock called Fort Saavedra. At that point the Bolivians put German General Hans Kundt in command. By classic flanking tactics, he pushed the Paraguayans back nearly to the Paraguay river with tanks and flamethrowers. At the end of the first year, the Paraguayans officially declared war and went to work. In another year they pushed General Kundt back again to Fort Saavedra, slaughtered some 15,000 Bolivians. General Kundt was dismissed in disgrace. A popular Bolivian named Colonel Enrique Penaranda del Castillo took over,, failed to keep Paraguay from taking Fort Muñoz but halted her before Fort Ballivian, which lies in the open western plains. Forced into the open, the Paraguayan bushfighters died by thousands when they charged out of their shallow trenches into machine-gun fire.
Last year shrewd General Estigarribia played a master stroke. As Bolivian elections came on, he moved north from "impregnable" Fort Ballivian, launched a gaudy offensive. Bolivia's President Daniel Salamanca needed victories to help elect a successor of his own party. He counterattacked in the north, leaving Fort Ballivian unprotected, won his victories and his election. But a few days later Estigar-ribia appeared before Fort Ballivian, summarily took it and slogged on into Bolivia proper. Disastrously outwitted, Salamanca was booted out of the Presidency by a beet-nosed banker of the peace-loving Liberal party, José Luis Tejada Sorzano (TIME, Dec. 10).
On paper, Paraguay, once out of the hot, thirsty jungle into the cool Bolivian foothills, should have gone on to unconditional victory. But in fact the Paraguayans, who prefer the heat, could not stand the cool autumn and winter nights in the foothills. Estigarribia lost a few battles, fell back, moved once more to the hotter north to start a new offensive far from his real objective. Actually the war had reached deadlock.
At least 17 mediation attempts had been made by the League of Nations, by the U. S.. by the ABC powers. An arms embargo had been laid down by the U. S., another by the League. Neither slowed the war down in the slightest. Paraguay had indignantly announced her resignation from the League. But last month, with military deadlock, the time seemed right for one more decisive peace effort. The two nations were utterly exhausted. Paraguay had won on the map but Bolivia was far from finished.
Peace without Victory was what the U. S. State Department wanted, what the Latin American nations had meant in 1932 when they declared that ''military conquest grants no sovereignty." Once more the diplomats of the U. S. and of the five dominating Latin American republics (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay) assembled last month in Buenos Aires. Bolivia sent its Foreign Minister Tomas Manuel Elio, Paraguay its Luis A. Riart. Once more the party was about to break up in hot Spanish gesticulation when the U. S. Ambassador to Argentina, grave, able Career Diplomat Alexander Wilbourne Weddell, urged everybody to sit down and settle the war on the spot. Miraculously they did so last week, subject only to ratification by the Parliaments of Bolivia and Paraguay.