EX-PREMIER DISGRACED

Evening Star, Issue 21750, 19 June 1934, Page 9

EX-PREMIER DISGRACED

LITHUANIAN INCIDENT TWELVE YEARS’ HARD LABOUR Press Association—By Telegraph— Copyright. KOVNO, June 18. (deceived June 19, at 10.15 a.in.) Voldemaras was sentenced to twelve years’ hard labour. [A message from Kovno on the- 7Ui inst read;—An attempted coup d’etat, surrounded by mystery owing to the interruption of the communications, resulted in the arrest of the exiled Prime Minister (Professor Voldemaras) after a dramatic bid for power. The country is now stated to bo quiet. Professor Voldemaras’s supporters, backed by a flying corps and tank detachments, proclaimed him Prime Minister. Some firing occurred due to confusion in connection with a night attack. President Smctona refused to negotiate with the revolutionaries, and demanded their submission.]

A VARIED CAREER Professor Voldemaras ceased to be Prime Minister of Lithuania in 1930. Early in that year a determined attempt was made to assassinate him. It was stated that the assailants were hidden in a garden opposite the State Theatre, and that they fired seven shots at the Prime Minister and his party as they alighted from a motor car to attend a concert. They succeeded in killing the aide-de-camp, and seriously wounded the Premier’s foster son and a lady who was with the party, finally escaping in the excitement. _ Professor Voldemaras is a graduate in classics and philology at the pre-war University of St. Petersburg, of which he afterwards became a teacher, He is said to bo a remarkable linguist, with a knowledge of something like sixteen languages, including English. He has twice been Prime Minister and five times Foreign Minister since the establishment of the independent Republic of Lithuania, in November of 1918. He was also Lithuania’s chief delegate at the Versailles Peace Conference, while in 1929 he represented his country at the conference with Poland over the Vilna difficulty, Lithuania claiming that city as an integral part of the State. Professor Voldemaras belongs to the Nationalist Party, and his public utterances of recent years have been characterised by their extraordinary vigour and even vehemence, as was the case during the Vilna controversy. On the other hand, Professor Voldemaras has to his credit the conclusion of treaties of conciliation and arbitration with Italy and Germany, and of a concordat with the Vatican. His life has been a more or less stormy one, and it would now appear that his political career has ended.