Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1927. POLAND AND LITHUANIA.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 30 December 1927, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1927. POLAND AND LITHUANIA.

The protracted dispute between Poland and Lithuania illustrates the difficulties which have arisen out of the territorial adjustments in Europe brought about by the war. The authors of the various treaties which, as ■ they hoped, were to end war by removing its causes, were guided by the principle of self-determination. This principle is unimpeachable in theory. Several former European States had been violently incorporated in or been partitioned among others. Their inhabitants had retained their racial individuality, and, in many instances, laboured under serious legal (usabilities. Manifestly it was inequitable that in the areas which once belonged to these conquered States majorities should be subject to minorities dissimilar in stock, and frequently unsympathetic in their treatment of the “aliens,’ 7 socalled, although strictly The cap was on the other head. The aim of the distinguished cartographers at Versailles and St. Germain was to rectify these anomalies, but when they came to apply the principle of self-determination they found that the question bristled with complexity. The populations of the countries of Western Europe are fairly homogeneous. Those of Central and South-east-ern Europe are not. An ethnographical map of these regions resembles a patchwork quilt, and presents an inextricable racial medley in which no clear lines of demarcation can be drawn. Even in areas only a few miles in extent the same tangle exists. In tire case of Fiume, for example, the possession of which was so keenly coveted by Italy and Jugo-Slavia, the population of the city proper is Italian, and that of its environs is Slavonic. With Vilna, again, the chief bone of contention between Poland and Lithuania, the Poles predominate in the town, but the inhabitants of the surrounding districts are Lithuanian. The commissions of experts who were charged with the duty, of delimiting the frontiers realised that any recommendation they

could make must involve hardship to some racial interests. The most they could achieve was an approximation to justice. In tire upshot. Poland, Roumania and Cze-cho-Slovakia all contain large elements which, though native, are of different nationality from the dominant one. Further embarrassment lias been caused by the fact that, of the new States that have come into being since the war, some, such as Poland, were created by the Treaties, whereas others were not. They owed their existence to their own initiative, and staked out their claims without reference to the Allies. In the ]alter part of 1917, a conference met at Vilna, and early in the next year the independence of Lithuania was solemnly proclaimed. and Lithuanian territory was declared to include the province of Vilna, with the exception of two small areas on its eastern border. The independence of Poland was not proclaimed until-No-vember, 1918, but the two States received de jure recognition from the Great Powers, and Poland in the reverse order. It was accorded in June, 1919, but to Lithuania not until December, 1922. Meanwhile, Poland had taken advantage of the confusion of the years immediately following upon tin* war to annex Vilna. Lithuania protested and appealed to the League, which, confronted with an accomplished fact, weakly decided in favour of Poland. Matters came to a head recently, when there were some provocative utterances and exhibitions of sabre milling on either side. Eortnuatelv wiser councils prevailed at Geneva, and a settlement has been arrived at, whereby Lithuania terminates the state of war, while Poland promises to respect Lithuania’s territorial integrity. Still the last has not been heard about the dispute over Vilna, and trouble is bound to recur unless it is disposed of on a basis acceptable to both.