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Show KEEPING BACK THE CONSPIRATORS. i With the creating of Lithuania, a buffer state is placed between fermany and Russia proper. How important a part this buffer state is to play is disclosed by the following statement made by the Lithuanian Lith-uanian national council: Sill war, holds the key of the future of Germany, and the world at last begins be-gins to understand that by the intelligence of its dealings with that country, or the lack of it, will be written finally the record of the success suc-cess or the failure of the conclave of Paris. Germany turns from ambitions of war conquest westward to ambitions ambi-tions of economic conquests eastward. All the politicians of the peace conference knew it. Europe knows it. Financiers and traders everywhere ev-erywhere know it. Little Lithuanian holds valoriously the gate through which the Germans Ger-mans must go to reach Russia Russia of undeveloped trade-wealth, of undeveloped land wealth, of undeveloped timber and mineral wealth. Not only does Lithuania hold the gate, but it wants to push back through it at once the German soldiers who arc the last Germans left within. The peace conference and the armistice commission before it are responsible for the fact thai there are German soldiers still in this strategic area. Recognized as an error, it has achieved the standing stand-ing of big mistakes it has to be undone with a formality that eats up further time, much to the profit of the Germans. They are to be out in the fall (instead of tomorrow) and if they can wreck the country before they go, break its courage, rend the economic structure beyond be-yond repair, they believe they can penetrate at will afterwards, laugh at efforts of interference, and go on through the Lithuanian corridor to golden Russia. In the public mind, Poland has been regarded as the buffer state hedging Germany from coveted Russia. But beyond Dantzig is Koe-nigsberg, Koe-nigsberg, and below Koenigsberg is Allenstein, and the territory east in between, clear to the Nicman river, is German, and is to remain so. Tilsit, on the left bank of the Nieman, is German, though Momel at the mouth is to give Lithuania access to the sea, and the Nieman river is to be a neutral thoroughfare. To the south Poland can hold back Germany. Ger-many. To the north Lithuania must hold back Germany, if Germany is to be held back. So the safe-guarding of Lithuania to enable it to perform its task takes the center of the post-war stage. And on what personality does the spot-light rest? On a pony-built dynamo of a man, five feet of compressed energy, youthful and keen on Professor A. Voldemar, foreign minister of the provisional government of Lithuania, and president of its delegation to the peace conference. He has fought until the needs of Lithuania are known to the observant. He has fought until some of them have been satisfied. He is fighting on for the rest. "Lithuania," he says, "has done all that a small, devoted land may do. I do not say that it has done all that it will do, for the depths of sacrifice to which patriots fighting for the preservation of their land can go are not known. But the deeds are better than my words, and they are deeds that deserve the outside, available help for which Lithuania' Lith-uania' asks. "In spite of past and continuing German efforts at disorganization in our rear, the Russian Bolsheviki have been driven out of the part of Lithuania they overran, until, in conjunction with our neighbors of Lettland to the north, we have them back in the trenches of the old ' Russian army at Dvinsk. "Though outnumbered still, the forces under General Zukauskos can take the city whenever joint-provision can be made for feeding the city. Our poorly equipped troops fight with a will which the better bet-ter equipped Bolsheviki have not. "I say we can take Dvinsk now. Yet from Dvinsk in the autumn, if we are to be left all alone, will join Russia and Germany. The Bolsheviki are hard pressed on distant lines by the forces of the Russian Rus-sian opponents of Bolshevism. Later should that pressure lessen, they can bring reinforcements against us. "Now and soon is our best time to help ourselves and the orderly part of the world. "To that end we are asking at Paris and in the capitals of the ' world : "(1) The Recognition of the Independence of Lithuania, that through this political organization we may the sooner achieve industrial indus-trial and financial organization. "(2) The equipment of our army from the great supplies of clothing, cloth-ing, shoes, medicines, guns and munitions now available, for instance, from the demobilization of the American Expeditionary force alone. "(3) The immediate withdrawal of the German army of from 15,-000 15,-000 to 20,000 men which was allowed to remain in Lithuania after the armistice under the mistaken impression that it would be a force fnr nrAr "The Germans do not want order in Lithuania. Their profit is in disorder. Moreover, it is the German method to create confusion by playing cunningly with many groups, to the end that weakness and not strength will finally oppose them. "They have aided the Bolsheviki. They have fanned the Polish difficulties. They have made every discord they could. "Then directly they have robbed us, through the medium of the control of the railroads, which they have for the period of evacuation. evacua-tion. The trains which are supposed to carry their soldiers home to Germany carry instead the goods of Lithuania, food needed in Lithuania Lith-uania and all the movable wealth upon which they can lay their hands. If an early limit to the evacuation period is not set, it is Lithuania that will have been transported to Germany. With the railroads in the territory they still occupy goes the posts and the telegraphs. "With broken communications in our rear, how can it be that our re-organization is not dangerously retarded?" There is much to this Lithuanian appeal. The Standard, from the beginning of the Lenine-Trotzky administration, has looked upon the 4eaders of the Bolsheviki as German agents, devoted to re-establishing the power of Germany in Russia, and the one big thing for the rest of the world is to fight down those forces as part of a most dangerous dan-gerous conspiracy. Poland and Lithuania should be sustained as independent countries and as barriers to the exploiting schemers of Germany. |