VILNA HAS CURIOUS HISTORY

Evening Star, Issue 23379, 23 September 1939, Page 6

VILNA HAS CURIOUS HISTORY

A PRIZE OF VALUE Vilna, which is mentioned as in th* line of a possible Russian invasion of Poland, fell into the hands of the Russians on two occasions after the World War. The story of. that time is a curiou* one. Vilna had been captured by th* Germans in 1915 after the most, ephemeral resistance, and when Poland and Lithuania emerged as new State* after the 1914-18 struggle, the frontier between them was not fixed. At the end of 1919 the provisional frontier handed down by the Supreme Council of the Allies (“ the Curzon Lino ”) excluded Vilna from Polish territory. At that time the Russians, with whom the Lithuanians vyere at war, had succeeded in overrunning the territory. Three month later the Lithuanians were on the point of capturing the city when the Poles arrived first. Lithuania then made peace with the Russians and her claim to Vilna was recognised by the Soviet—now that the Poles held it. Soon afterwards the Poles lost not only Vilna, but almost the whole of their country, but finally drove th© Russians out. Then the Russians, unable to hold Vilna, handed it over to Lithuania. A “rebel” Polish general seized tha place in October, 1920, breaking an agreement under which the Poles had recognised Vilna as Lithuanian territory, and that country never ceased to protest. It was because of this disappointment that the Lithuanians, imitating Polish methods, seized Memel from Germany. They were forced by Herr Adolf Hitler to return Memel earlier in this year. Vilna is at the junction of three railways and the confluence of two rivers, and thus obviously a prize in timq'of war.