A DANGEROUS QUARREL.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 78, 2 April 1928, Page 6

A DANGEROUS QUARREL.

h\o1 } bodj, who is seriously concerned for the future of the League of Nations und the prospects of European peace must be relieved to learn that Poland and Lithuania have at last taken practical steps toward the settlement of their long-standing frontier dispute. The formation of a new Poland by the League of Nations in 1919 made it necessary to°f;x Nefinitelv the boundary line which separates these two countries, but the claims put forward by the two States were extremely complicated and difficult to decide. At last in 1923, the Ambassadors' Conference, representing the Allies, assigned the province and city <>f \ iln.i to 1 oland, and from that moment there has always been imminent danger of war between the two countries.

Tim questions at issue in the delimitation of this frontier were partly racial or nationalist, partly economic. But the situation is further complicated by Poland's "historical" claim to lar«?e areas once ruled over by her kiu-s centuries a-o. The award of the Ambassadors' Conference was regarded bv 1 oland as iinal, but by the Lithuanians as merely provisional, and to mark their determination never to accept this diminution of their territory the Lithuanians have firmly refused to make any formal peace with Poland. A state of war has, in fact, technically existed along the disputed frontier for the last seven years, and the League of Nations therefore summoned the representatives of the two States to Geneva in December last to discuss tho situation fully. At this meeting a dramatic scene took place between Marshal Pilsudski, who is virtually dictator of Poland, and }f. Waldemaras, the Prime Minister of Lithuania. At last, after Pilsudski had threatened to withdraw to Poland and gi\e the signal for war, Briand intervened, and \\ aldemaras was induced to give an assurance of peaceful intentions.

The Council of the League seems now to have decided that the right moment had come to assert itself. It adopted a resolution to the effect that the "state of war" which had officially existed for seven years between Poland and Lithuania is now at an end; and it further resolved that, if more trouble arose later, the League, acting through the President of the Council, "might take such steps as would be considered necessary to prevent another crisis." This amounts to an assertion of authority over an independent sovereign State which the League has not claimed hitherto. But apart from this, the main question at issue is still unsettled. Xo suggestion was made that Yilna must be restored to Lithuania. But on the other hand, so long as the Poles occupy the province without the sanction of the League, and without any confirmation of their title, Lithuania is justified in demanding and expecting their withdrawal. The Conference now sitting at Kovno must arrange some sort of compromise agreeable to both parties, under penalty of compelling the League to intervene, or plunging Europe again into the tragedy of a great war.