The Council of the League of Nations on Tuesday discussed
the dispute between Poland and Lithuania over Vilna. It persuaded Lithuania to accept the compromise devised by M. Hymens, who would make Vilna an autonomous province of Lithuania, with rights similar to those of a Swiss canton. The Polish delegate remained obdurate. Mr. Balfour in. very plain terms expressed the general disgust at Poland's evasiveness. The Polish General Zeligowski remained in occupation of Vilna. " What was Zeligowski—a rebel deserving of military sentence or a patriot deserving of a patriot's crown ? " The Poles gave one answer or the other, according to circumstances. They wanted to go on talking, " while this ambiguous general with his troops of uncertain allegiance remained in possession of the disputed territory." The Polish delegate made a bad case worse by opposing, in company with Rumania alone, Lithuania's demand for admission to the League. Poland is extremely ill- advised to flout the Allies in this way. She needs all the help she can get from the West to maintain the sanitary cordon against typhus and to feed her refugees, and she may at any moment have to face a fresh- Bolshevik invasion. Yet she would alienate all her friends for the sake of Vilna-with its mixed population, to the scarcely concealed delight of Berlin and Moscow.
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