The Memel Elections Events at Memel on Sunday, when the
much-discussed elections take place, will be watched with anxiety throughout Europe. Whatever its faults in the past Lithuania has in the last few weeks shown itself fully alive to the necessity for so conducting the elections as to give no valid ground for complaints by Germany. Invalid complaints there will almost inevitably be in any ease ; the aggressive nationalism cultivated under National Socialist rule militates fatally against reasonable co-operatiori between Germans and Lithuanians at Memel, or Germans and Poles at Danzig. In the case of Danzig the League has a special status and disputes go regularly to the Council for settlement. The Memel constitution is guaranteed by Britain, rance, Italy and (nominally) Japan. The fact that the three European guarantors are to have representatives at Memel on Sunday to watch the conduct of the elections, coupled with the assurances given them at Geneva on Wednesday by the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, M. Lozoraitis, should go far to ensure a free and fair vote. The Memellanders are fully entitled to stand for their just rights, but what Lithuania com- plains of, with some justice, is a. defiant nationalism fomented from Berlin.
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