MUTINY EXPECTED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16866, 1 February 1929, Page 7

MUTINY EXPECTED

UNREST IN LITHUANIA (Australian and N.’Z. Press Association.) KOVNO, Jan. 30. Professor Valdetnaras, the Lithuanian dictator and notorious in League of Nation circles for his long and bellicose speeches and a reputation of speaking 16 languages, discovered a plot to overthrow his Government. He had 18 of the highest officers of the Kovno garrison arrested, ineluding the Chief of the General Staff, General Pleehavitchius. According to Warsaw despatches almost the whole of Lithuania is restive, and open mutiny is expected. OFFICERS ARRESTED (Australian Press Assn. —United Service.' (Received Feb. 1, 11 a.m.) RIGA, Jan. 31. Kovno reports state that Professor Valdemaras lias forced General Plokhavichius, Chief of General Staff, to resign, and arrested him and 20 other officers suspected of plotting to overthrow the Government. LEAGUE GOES TO SLEEP LUGANO, Dec. 13. Many valuable hours of the League of Nations Council’s time were wasted to-dav by Professor Valdemaras, the Lithuanian dictator, who is the enfant terrible of the League. in almost unintelligible French, he delivered a speech embracing almost every event of importance in the history'of Lithuania during the last few hundred years. In the midst of his speech ot 53 typewritten pages he halted to explain in vigorous language that the breakdown of the last negotiations at Konigsberg for a settlement of the frontier dispute between Lithuania and Poland was entirely due to the fact that the Polish Minister’s secretary had fofgotten the date of the meeting and turned up a day late. M. Briand, the president, sharply reminded him that the council was not the least bit interested in the doings of private secretaries and invited him to stick to the subject. This be did with such enthusiasm that before lie had finished most of the delegates were dozing, while nearly all the public had left the room.