860m.01/60
Mr. Jonas Vileitis to the Secretary of State
Sir: Since I last had the honor to address you, certain events of serious significance have occurred in the life of the Lithuanian Republic, which seem to imply the necessity of a change of some kind in the relations between Lithuania and America and which I therefore respectfully beg to present to your attention.
The Constituent Assembly of Lithuania has adopted a Constitution and has instituted thereunder government with full legal and popular sanctions for the whole of Lithuania.
Poland, on the eve of defeat by Soviet Russia, has at last realized the importance of friendly relations with Lithuania and has formally recognized Lithuanian independence. Lithuania wishes only to live in peace and harmony with her neighbors. If her relations with Poland have not been satisfactory, the fault has been with the Poles and with the States which supported them in their occupation of Lithuanian territory and in their refusal to admit that Lithuania had the same right as Poland to be free. Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, which was long occupied by Poland, has now been handed over to Lithuania and there are prospects of marked improvement in the relations between the two Governments.
With the full agreement of Great Britain and with the knowledge and tacit consent of the other Allied Powers, a treaty of peace has been signed between Lithuania and the Soviet Government of Russia, by which Lithuania’s ethnographic boundaries are established on [Page 654] the Russian frontier and by which she is left free to negotiate regarding her boundaries with Poland, Latvia and Germany.
The victorious Bolshevist forces in Lithuania at first failed to respect the conditions of the treaty. They persisted in their occupation of Vilna and other important cities, where they began to organize local soviet governments, set up revolutionary tribunals, suppressed Lithuanian newspapers, arrested and imprisoned prominent Lithuanians, levied forced requisitions and robbed and ill-treated the Lithuanian population.
Against these violations of the treaty and of her neutrality, the Government of Lithuania vigorously protested. At length, as a result of Bolshevik attempts to seize Lithuanian locomotives, cars and equipment, actual fighting, attended by serious casualties, broke out between Bolshevik and Lithuanian troops, and Lithuania seemed for a short time to be threatened with a new war, in spite of the fact that peace had just been signed.
On July 20 an ultimatum was addressed by the Lithuanian Government to the Soviet Government, demanding that the unlawful aggressions of the Bolshevist forces should cease and that Vilna should be turned over to the Lithuanian civil authorities. The reply of the Soviet Government stated that it desired to avoid friction with the Lithuanian Government and proposed a joint commission to discuss the execution of the treaty. This proposal was accepted, the Commission has met at R;iga, and I have just been informed by my Government that as a result of the conference, Russia has agreed to completely evacuate Lithuanian territory. The same despatch states that on August 6th the treaty of peace was ratified by the Lithuanian Constituent Assembly.
The attitude of the Government of the United States in regard to this treaty is of course of great importance to Lithuania. As the Honorable Secretary of State is aware, I am without any official information from the Department of State, not only on this point, but as to the views of the Department generally regarding the independence of Lithuania, and I am therefore obliged to depend on the reports of the press. From these it is understood that the United States Government does not recognize, except in the cases of Poland and Finland, the possibility of the establishment of new governments in any part of the territories formerly controlled by the Imperial Russian Government, before the War, and that where other States, having a de facto existence, are in control of former Russian territories, they are regarded by the American Government as constructive trustees for the Russian people, to whom they will be obliged to return these territories, when the Russian people are ready to receive them again. It would seem to follow from this [Page 655] view (if it is correctly reported) that the American Government will not consider the treaty between the Soviet Government and Lithuania (or that previously made by the Soviet Government with Esthonia, or treaties which will doubtless soon be made with Poland and Finland if they alienate former Russian territory) as valid and binding, but expects them to be broken at some time in the future, when the Russian people are ready to receive back the territories in question.
May I be permitted respectfully to express the hope that the position of the Department of State has not been correctly indicated in the press. If it be true that Bolshevism cannot be crushed by military force, as has lately been shown by the disaster to Poland, then is the alternative not that the Powers opposed to Bolshevism should acknowledge the right of the States bordering upon Russia to make treaties of peace with the Soviet Government and should not the validity of these treaties be admitted by other States? Lithuania desires to be at peace with all her neighbors, particularly with great and powerful Russia, whatever be its form of Government. She must make peace with the Soviet Government, or by continuing war, add to the strength of Bolshevism, according to the view which now seems to be taken, that making war on Bolshevism only strengthens it. But if any treaty of peace which Lithuania makes is regarded by other Powers as only a scrap of paper, and if all Lithuania must be given back to the Russian people, the outlook seems to be only hopeless confusion.
There are in America approximately a million people of Lithuanian origin or connections. Half of them are American citizens. Fifty thousand of their young men served in the American army during the war. They accepted in good faith the teachings of the American Government that they were sent to fight to establish the principle of the self-determination of peoples, to protect the sanctity of treaties and to defend the rights of small nations against great ones. They are, and it is natural and right that they should be, deeply interested in the fate of Lithuania. They have waited and expected anxiously some indication from the American Government of at least moral support to the cause of Lithuanian independence. The Lithuanian Government itself, knowing the traditional American policy of sympathy toward new republics, has hoped that the American Government might see its way to make some encouraging public statement about Lithuania. But the only public official statement of the American Government’s attitude thus far has been its refusal to recognize Lithuania, expressed in letters to the Lithuanian National Council, which were given much publicity last winter and had a very disheartening effect on the Lithuanian people and [Page 656] on their friends in America. Is it not possible for the Department of State to give out even a brief statement of a more favorable kind?
In concluding, and upon the considerations advanced in the earlier part of this memorandum, I again have the honor to request that the Government of the United States extend official recognition to the Government of Lithuania.
With assurances [etc.]
Representative of Lithuania in America