UNDER MARTIAL LAW.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 302, 21 December 1926, Page 7

UNDER MARTIAL LAW.

REMOULDING LITHUANIA. PRESIDENT RESIGNS. I \ NEW GOVERNMENT FORMED. (By Cable.—Press Association.— Copyri?nt.) LOXDOX, December 20. A message from Kovno, the capital of ! Lithuania, reports that as a sequel to | the overthrow of the Government by a i military coup d'etat, the President, Dr. Grinius, has resigned. I Professor Yal de Marus has been appointed Prime Minister, and has been authorised to form a Government. Major Plekhavicius, who has proclaimed himself dictator, has appointed General Smetona as chief-of-staff. Martial law is in force, otherwise everything is normal. Dr. Kazys Grinius was elected President of Lithuania on June 8 of this year. HHe was the founder of the Democratic Peasant party in Lithuania, the "Social-Populists," and became its first chairman. After the outbreak of war he went to Russia, where he became head of a sanatorium for consumptives in the Caucasus. In 1918 the place was attacked by Bolsheviks, who' murdered Grinius' wife and daughter. His appointment as President of Lithuania was looked upon I as a victory for the party opposed to the Russian policy. M. Slesevicius, the Premier, who has been arrested, took office just after Dr. Grinius. He was one ' of the organisers of the movement which secured the independence of Lithuania in 1918, and was Premier of its second Cabinet. He is the leader of the Socialist party. POSITION OF LATVIA. NEW PREMIER IN OFFICE. LOXDOX, December 20. M. Skujenieks, the new Prime Minister of Latvia, has outlined his programme and the new Government is now officiating. Cabinet is advised by the Press to profit by the example of Lithuania. Latvia, which had been from the seventeenth century under Russian rule, was proclaimed a sovereign Free State in Xovember, 1918, aDd was admitted to the League of Xations in September, 1921. The President chooses the Prime Minister, who then forms a Cabinet, and the Cabinet is responsible to the Parliament. In August last the Baltic States of Latvia, Finland and Esthonia, offered to negotiate separately with Russia for an arbitration pact. The breaking of these negotiations between Finland and Russia seriously imperil the negotiations with HLatvia. The Moscow newspaper "Pravda" says that Finland proposed that the pact should include an arbitration clause, which Russia categorically refused. "Pravda" explains that "the principle of arbitration is not acceptable to Russia because the Soviet will not accept any decision made by a bourgeoise neutral party."