Poland's Neighbours It is hardly by accident that trouble has
flared up between Poland and Lithuania at this moment. It is true that a frontier conflict, in which a Polish guard, who for some reason was on the Lithuanian side of the line, was killed. Such things have happened before, and there is an established machinery for dealing with them locally. But Poland shows signs of wanting to use the episode for settling relations with Lithuania once for all. What that may involve is sufficiently suggested by the fact that Lithuania is a recognised protégé of Russia and a standing object of hostility to Germany, owing to the treatment of the German population of the port of Memel. On the other hand, the obduracy of the Lithu- anians 'in keeping the frontier between their country and Poland closed since the seizure of Vilna by-the Poles eighteen years ago is without excuse, and if Warsaw can secure its opening by any legitimate means, so much the better. The ancient dispute about Vilna could be argued out indefinitely ; it need only be observed that the fact that a Polish General seized it by a coup de main, at a moment when the tide of warfare had been ebbing and flowing over it for months, does not for a moment give the Lithuanians a good title to it. They will never regain it except with the help of Russia— in other words, except as the result of a European war. No one expects Lithuania to acquiesce formally in Poland's sover- eignty over Vilna, but it is fully time the anomaly of the closed frontier was ended once for all.
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