" THE NEW BALTIC STATE."
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.") FIR,—In your issue of June 22nd I notice an article on " The New Baltic State," which contains too many heresiei to be put right in a few lines. I beg you, however, to allow me to take this oppor- tunity of protesting against the affirmation contained in the phrase : " . . Letts and Esths, most of them belonging to the extreme wing of the Revolutionary Social Democracy." The Letts, who are certainly among the most educated nations of the world, having more than five per thousand of their population composed of University graduates, and about one per thousand of them being before the war students in foreign and Russian Universities, can be expected to possess a higher degree of political education than that represented by the various Socialist Parties. In fact, the Lettish Socialist Parties, which are financed by Germany, are very small and without real influence among the Letts as a whole, their members being drawn from the ranks of the least educated members of the lower classes; they do not represent even a fraction per thousand of the whole population. How is it possible that this fable that all Letts are revolutionaries can have become so widespread ? The answer is sufficiently simple. It is to be found in the work of German propaganda, and German policy has fully exploited this success. Under the old regi►ne, when the tiermans prepared their aggression, it helped them to obtain the support of the Russian Government in their measures against the Letts; even German colonization in Courland was regarded with much favour by the Russians as directed against the so-called revolutionary Letts, and the cession of Courland to Germany with- out resistance was also explained by the so-called Lettish Revolu- tionism. Under the new regime, the fable of the so-called revolu- tionary Letts was industriously circulated throughout the world by the German Press agencies—and willingly reproduced in the Entente Press—this having for its object the smoothing over of the betrayal of Lettonia by the Russian Army and Government. After the fall of Riga the so-called revolutionary Letts were accused of having overthrown the Provisional Government, with Kerensky at its head, who is responsible for handing over Riga to.the Germans. In the occupied regions, the Germans have executed thousands of patriotic Letts, (Jailing them revolutionaries, and not a word of protest has arisen from the civilized world, because all Letts are believed to be extreme revolutionaries a in russe, and as such deserving of the fate received at the hands of the Germans.—I am,
8 Stanhope Terrace, N.W. I.
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