NEWS OF THE WEEK T HE seizure of Memel by Herr
Hitler, in cynical violation of his declaration of last September, and apparently under threat of the bombing of the Lithuanian capital if Lithuania refused compliance, adds little to the gravity of a situation so grave already that this latest outrage takes a relatively secondary place. Memel, unlike Bohemia and Moravia, was till 1918 part of Germany and has been Ger- man in race and sympathy ever since. It was detached from the Reich and attached to Lithuania under a special statute, as Danzig was to Poland, in order that Lithuania might have a port on the Baltic. While, therefore, the seizure of Memel, whose population had been well indoctrinated with Nazism in preparation, is one more example of the ruthless exercise of a brutal militarism against a small and defenceless country —with the sinister secret police in the vanguard of the occu- pation=it is in a different category from the destruction of Czecho-Slovakia. The effect of the stroke is to bring the German advance nearer to Russia and to encircle Poland still further. It may dispose Colonel Beck to return a more satisfactory answer to the British Government's proposals for a defensive pact ; but in that connexion Poland's difficulties must be recognised. She is completely exposed geographic- ally to German attack, and unless the British plan gives her a more definite assurance than it is reported to do of full military assistance if she is invaded she may well hesitate to take a step which Germany would inevitably treat as a hostile act.
