Diplomats to the Rear

Rudely rocked in Latin America last week was the tradition that after generals have made war diplomats make peace. Utterly deadlocked, diplomats of Bolivia and Paraguay who have been trying to patch up peace during the Gran Chaco War armistice were served rough notice that they can go home and unbutton their spats by the two gruff commanders who fought each other to a standstill, Paraguay's General Jose Felix Estigarribia and Bolivia's General Enrique Penaranda. These two extraordinary militarists, who opened the armistice with a champagne luncheon at which they toasted each other on the battlefield (TIME, July 29), got down to business last week with such vehemence that their aides predicted: "If the Governments concerned do not accept the peace they make, General Penaranda and General Estigarribia will force it upon them."

Far from wishing to interfere, Bolivia's big-nosed, phlegmatic President Jose Luis Tejada Sorzano began behaving as if peace were as good as sealed, announced a "postwar reconstruction program'' to be featured by borrowing, if possible, $25,000,000. This will be spent tapping Bolivia's two-mile-high Lake Titicaca and using the water thus obtained to drive turbines which will whirl dynamos to supply current for the grandiose project of "electrifying all our railroads." Surplus water, according to the President, will be used for vast irrigation projects. The work is to be done by enigmatic Mauricio Hochschild, head of South America's active Hochschild Engineering Co. Last week the company's Wall Street lawyers said that until Mr. Hochschild arrives in Manhattan it will not be known who is to buy Bolivia's bonds.

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