VILNA AND SUPERSTITION

After having enjoyed a vivid report of the international white slave trade, which caused more than one delegate to lose his temper, the Council of the League is confronted with the equally spectacular but more difficult task of dealing with the dicator of Poland.

This high-handed gentleman, who controls his Parliament by locking its doors or rearranging its calendar whenever criticism is attempted, is on his way to Geneva to present his country's claims in the Lithuanian dispute. This dispute arose seven years ago when without good reason Polish forces marched into Lithuania and seized the capital, Vilna, and occupied a good portion of that country. Since then the inhabitants have been energetically kept in hand and revolutions have been continually fomented against the government which controls what is left of Lithuania.

To annex this country is only the first step in the grandiloquent scheme of Polish nationalists to build a gigantic state stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Of course this could not be accomplished without another war, which even the most sanguinary believe cannot happen for at least ten years. Yet that the Poles have been allowed to retain Vilna for seven years without an investigation by the League or interference by any of the powers shows that all is not well. It has its roots in the same condition that is responsible for anti-Semitic riots in Hungary, Gaelic street-signs in Ireland, and the utterances of the Mayor of Chicago.

The presence of certain illusive and indefinable likenesses between groups of men has been elevated into a faith which demands precedence over all others. Men have believed in oracles, in witchcraft, in "humanity." Now they believe in nationalism. That there should be communal and religious ties and obligations is justiflable and praiseworthy, but that an arbitrary, even absurd notion should be elevated into a fanaticism which may allow certain unscrupulous men to plunge the world into anarchy is tragic.