ly live and strive as an independent state. The Lithuanian Jews,
however, were of a different way of thinking, and they opposed the
Polish claims with a degree of steadfastness and animation which wounded
Poland's national pride and left rankling sores behind.

It is worth noting that the representatives of Russia, who are supposed
to clutch convulsively at all the states which once formed part of the
Tsardom, displayed a degree of political detachment in respect of
Lithuania which came as a pleasant surprise to many. The Russian
Ambassador in Paris, M. Maklakoff, in a remarkable address before a
learned assembly[188] in the French capital, announced that Russia was
henceforward disinterested in the status of Lithuania.

That the Poles were minded to deal very liberally with the Lithuanians
became evident during the Conference. General Pilsudski, on his own
initiative, visited Vilna and issued a proclamation to the Lithuanians
announcing that elections would be held, and asking them to make known
their desires, which would be realized by the Warsaw government. One of
the many curious documents of the Conference is an official missive
signed by the General Secretary, M. Dutasta, and addressed to the first
Polish delegate, exhorting him to induce his government to come to terms
with the Lithuanian government, as behooves two neighboring states.
Unluckily for the soundness of that counsel there was no recognized
Lithuanian state or Lithuanian government to come to terms with.

As has been often enough pointed out, the actions and utterances of the
two world-menders were so infelicitous as to lend color to the
belief--shared by the representatives of a number of humiliated
nations--that greed of new markets was at the bottom of what purported
to be a policy of pure humanitarianism. Some of the delegates were
currently supposed to be the unwitting instruments of elusive
capitalistic influences. Possibly they would have been astonished were
they told this: Great Britain was suspected of working for complete
control of the Baltic and its seaboard in order to oust the Germans from
the markets of that territory and to have potent levers for action in
Poland, Germany, and Russia. The achievement of that end would mean
command of the Baltic, which had theretofore been a German lake.[189] It
would also entail, it was said, the separation of Dantzig from Poland,
and the attraction of the Finns, Esthonians, Letts, and Lithuanians fr