STRIFE IN LITHUANIA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4046, 11 May 1938, Page 10

STRIFE IN LITHUANIA

STORM CENTRE OF THE BALTIC STATES. Sharing that part of the southeasern Baltic coast which stretches ’ from the eastern frontier of Germany almost to Leningrad are three little independent States complete with Governments, all of a semi - dictatorial type, armies, navies, and diplomatic services. They are Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. They owe their independence, first, to the collapse of the Russian Imperial regime, and secondly, to the defeat of Germany in 1918. Had Tsarist Russia survived the war, it is probable that all three would ‘have continued _ under Russian . rule.. Had Germany won it, it is almost certain that Lithuania and some part of Latvia at least would have been incorporated in the German Reich. The three States escaped a third possible dispensation, that of becoming member units of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. Soviet Russia was too weak in 1918 to make a sustained effort to retain them, and the Estonians, Letts, and Lithuanians were as vigorous in repelling Bolshevism within and without as they had been in resisting Germanisation during a short period of the war. Between Lithuania and Germany there are the grievances of the Memellanders. Memel is in some respect:? like another Danzig. Before the war it belonged to Germany, marking the farthest east of German trade expansion up the Baltic. The city itself ia predominantly German in population, but economically it is the port of Lithuania. In fact, without it, Lithuania would not have a port. After the war the Allied Powers could not make up their minds what to do about Memel after they had compelled Germany to cede it. Until they could they placed it under the control of a Conference of Ambassadors and garrisoned it with a small detachment of French troops. There were plans for giving it the status of a free and independent city after the model devised for Danzig. But the Lithuanians grew impatient In January, 1923, they marched some troops into the city. It was a bloodless victory. The Allied Powers acknowledged a fait accompli by the little State, accorded to Lithuania the sovereignty of the Memel territory, but secured guarantees of autonomy in the local administration of the city for the German majority. This, however was only a small compensation for what the Lithuanians. had had to suffer at the hands of Poland in 1920. Lithuania had originally claimed a large area of territory lying to the east and north-east of the River Nieman. In fact, it had chosen the principal city in the area, Vilna, to be its capital. Had it been able to realise its ambitions it would have been a State of 5,000,000 instead of 2,500,000. There was a tangle of events in 1919-20 the march of a Russian Soviet army to the outskirts of Warsaw. which took Vilna in its stride; Polish appeals for Lithuanian aid; Lithuanian hopes of regaining Vilna ; if they did not commit themselves too i deeply in antagonism to Russia.

Ultimately, the Russian invasion was rolled back, thanks mainly to timely French assistance received by the Poles, and this change of fortune found the Poles in possession of Vilna and the surrounding territory. They refused to budge. The League of Nations finally accepted the situation in 1923 and gave de jure recognition to the new Polish—Lithuanian frontier. The Lithuanians, however, have refused up to now to acquiesce in this decision. They make the best of Kovno as their capital, while still claiming Vilna, respect the Polish frontier because they have not the strength tc break it, but administer their side of it under the conditions of an armistice, putting many impediments in the way of communications and trade. In 1935 the grievances of the German Memellanders in Lithuania were exciting much international attention and anxiety. To support them Germany had declared an economic blockade of Lithuania. Under some persuasion from the League of Nations the Lithuanian Government was induced to satisfy the Memellanders’ demand for more scrupulous observance of their autonomy, the German blockade was lifted, and eight Memellanders who had ben sentenced to imprisonment for high treason were released. Now Poland presses upon this small, though sometimes truculent, State to abandon its passive but troublesome resistance to the contraction of its frontier enforced 18 years ago. The three Baltic States have a pact of mutual consultation and collaboration for the protection of their common interests’ somewhat on the lines of the Little Entente between Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Yugoslavia, but they recognise in it “the existence of specific problems in regard to which the adoption of a common attitude might be a matter of difficulty,” and they therefore agree “to allow these problems to constitute an exception to the engagements laid down in the treaty.” This saving clause has reference o both the Memel and the Polish —Lithuanian frontier questions,.