Lithuania and Poland

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AMONG the numerous antagonisms that disturb the new Eastern Europe, there is none that has been more unexpected, none that has proved more troublesome, few that may be fraught with greater dangers than the hostility that has grown up between Lithuania and Poland. For four years now the quarrel between these states, particularly over the Vilna territory, has kept them at swords' points. Periods of armed conflict have alternated with protracted and heated diplomatic struggles; the coveted territory has changed hands six times; the great powers and the League of Nations have been involved in the dispute; and yet today the rivals are still on a war footing towards each other, and the chief question at stake may be reopened at any moment. Nor is this affair one of merely local or neighborhood interest. Apart from the moral issues bound up with the question whether this is or is not a case of a weaker nation suffering from the "imperialism" of a stronger one, the settlement of the Vilna problem is sure to have important consequences for the political equilibrium of Europe. For statesmen at Paris, Moscow or Berlin it is doubtless a matter of great moment whether, by the attribution of Vilna to Poland, a considerable barrier is to be erected between Germany and Russia, while Poland is enabled to join hands with Latvia, Esthonia and Finland, with whom she is trying to form a Baltic League; or whether, by the assignment of Vilna to Lithuania, a corridor is to be opened up between Germany and Russia across the territory of a small state that has shown a certain friendliness to both these powers. In general, the new political system which the Allied Powers have been striving to create would be appreciably strengthened if Poland and Lithuania could become friends or allies, while the continued enmity between these two states may greatly serve the designs of those who desire to overthrow the new order...