Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/152



quested to make a preliminary report. He agreed to act only on the following conditions : That be- cause of the complexity and difficulty of the ques- tions involved, it would be necessary to report on the suggested boundary by sections, that each sec- tion should be voted upon as reported by him, and that a majority vote on each section should be decisive. This proposal was accepted. After a careful investigation, Buchanan made his report, and it was found that on each section the sug- gested boundary was carried by two votes against one; the American always voted in the affirma- tive; the Chilian and Argentinian, as in the par- ticular section the allotments seemed favorable or unfavorable to their respective country. In ac- cordance with the terms agreed upon, the entire report had thus to be accepted, and all the thorny problems of long-standing boundary controversies were settled. Had Buchanan not used this strata- gem it is very unlikely that the report as a whole would have been accepted, as each of his associ- ates would have felt that he could not vote for a report containing arrangements for giving up spe- cific tracts of territory which his country had hitherto always insisted upon retaining. By this clever arrangement Buchanan made it possible for them to vote against such relinquishment in