names.  “Point them out to me on the map,” insisted the British Premier.  They were pointed out on the map.  Twice President Wilson asked the delegate to spell the name Bomst for him.[185] Mr. Lloyd George then said:  “Well, those are oversights that can be rectified.”  “Oh yes,” added Mr. Wilson, “we will see to that."[186] M. Dmowski also questioned the President about the plebiscite, and under whose auspices the voting would take place, and was told that there would be an Inter-Allied administration to superintend the arrangements and insure perfect freedom of voting.  “Through what agency will that administration work?  Is it through the officials?” “Evidently,” Mr. Wilson answered.  “You are doubtless aware that they are Germans?” “Yes.  But the administration will possess the right to dismiss those who prove unworthy of their confidence.”  “Don’t you think,” insisted M. Dmowski, “that it would be fairer to withdraw one half of the German bureaucrats and give their places to Poles?” To which the President replied:  “The administration will be thoroughly impartial and will adopt all suitable measures to render the voting free.”  There the matter ended.

The two potentates in council, tackling the future status of Lithuania, settled it in an offhand and singular fashion which at any rate bespoke their good intentions.  The principle of self-determination, or what was facetiously termed the Balkanization of Europe, was at first applied to that territory and a semi-independent state created in petto which was to contain eight million inhabitants and be linked with Poland.  Certain obstacles were soon afterward encountered which had not been foreseen.  One was that all the Lithuanians number only two millions, or say at the most two millions and one hundred thousand.  Out of these even the Supreme Council could not make eight millions.  In Lithuania there are two and a half million Poles, one and a half million Jews, and the remainder are White Russians.[187] It was recognized that a community consisting of such disparate elements, situated where it now is, could hardly live and strive as an independent state.  The Lithuanian Jews, however, were of a different way of thinking, and they opposed the Polish claims with a degree of steadfastness and animation which wounded Poland’s national pride and left rankling sores behind.

It is worth noting that the representatives of Russia, who are supposed to clutch convulsively at all the states which once formed part of the Tsardom, displayed a degree of political detachment in respect of Lithuania which came as a pleasant surprise to many.  The Russian Ambassador in Paris, M. Maklakoff, in a remarkable address before a learned assembly[188] in the French capital, announced that Russia was henceforward disinterested in the status of Lithuania.