Careful Smetona

The day after the recent Memel election, Lithuania's President Antanas Smetona was inaugurated for his fourth term, remarked "we small countries must be careful." Since the election--in which Menial's Nazi party with a "Back to the Reich" slogan, won 25 out of 29 seats in Memel's semi-autonomous assembly--President Smetona has had to be more than careful. Adolf Hitler likes Smetona's most potent political rival, Augustine Valdemaras, and Nazis have pressed for his inclusion in Lithuania's Cabinet.

Valdemaras, known as the "Firebrand of the Baltic," was Lithuania's Premier and dictator from 1926 to 1929, when he was ousted by Smetona. In 1934 he was sentenced to twelve years' hard labor for an unsuccessful coup d'etat, was later allowed to go to France where he has been living as an exile. Known as a Germanophile and Fascist, hardheaded, stiff-necked Augustine Valdemaras is also bitterly anti-Polish. Back in the late twenties he campaigned so vigorously for the return of Vilna* to Lithuania that Poland's late gruff old Marshal Pilsudski finally asked him point-blank in a League council meeting: "Is it peace or war?" Also of interest to Hitler is the fact that Valdemaras was associated in 1917 with a Ukrainian Mission which came to Berlin seeking German backing for an independent Ukrainian state, an idea that suits Germany today.

Last week hard-pressed President Smetona decreed a six-month emergency period "for the protection of the state." Students at Kaunas, Lithuanian capital, rioted against the Government; anti-Semitic outbreaks occurred there and at Memel. At Memel, the Directory dismissed Lithuanian State police, replaced them with Memel Nazis. The day did not seem far off when Nazi agents, using Memel as a base, may harass President Smetona into resigning or recalling Valdemaras. In either case the probable result will be the same: the Lithuanian Government will follow Hitler's orders, will accept German annexation of Memel, and, with Vilna held before it as bait, will like Czecho-Slovakia become a stooge for Germany.

* Poland recognized Lithuania's claim to Vilna in the presence of a League commission in 1920, two days later seized the city, has held it ever since.

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