Norwich bulletin., 1922-10-31

distinctive. According to Dr. Edwin A.
 GFosvenor's classification of the races
 of Europe the Letts and the Lithu-
 anians stand alone as a separate stem
 of the great Slav family tree that splits
 into numerous branches among the Eastern Slavs, the Western Slavs, and the south, or Jugo-Slavs.
 fLatvia received it's credentials as. a nation from the allied supreme coun- cil almost two years ago. It earned this early recognition as a reward, in part. for allying itself with Poland against Russia, while Esthonia, to the north, made a friendly treaty with the soviet government, and Lithuania, to the south, engaged in a dispute with Po- land over boundary question.
 Mere mention of these three new states indicates how the Baltic sea
 manor has been subdivided into new national building lots. Here where the old Russian and German empires and | Sweden held complacent sway, an as- sortment of new national neighbors sud- denly starts housekeeping = Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, 1 with it's precious corridor to the sea, | and the free city of Danzig separating l the German republic from West Prus- sia. Sweden remains, as does Den mark, whose small frontage now be- | q l terfront development. Strangely 1 enough giant Russia retains only a I right of way--to preserve real estate l terminelogy-and emerges now from Petrograd, through the gulf that sepa- rates Esthonia from Finland and bears l the latter,s name.
 "A consideration of Latvia brings two
 new words into playwords which. like intelligensia| may be missing from l many dictionaries, but which go long
 way toward explaining important facts about the new republic.
 ''One of these words is Bait The l word does not refer, as might be suS- 1 peeted, to any indigenous resident oi l the former Baltic provinces of Russia. 1 Just the opposite. A Bait is non Lett descendant of the Brethren of the Sword, an aptly named band of Ger man merchants who settled along the Gulf of Riga, near the present Latvia capital. Riga, and started in to convert
 or kill the Let's. Then and there the Let's gave an inkling of their independ- ent temper. They drove out the medic val missionaries, immersed themselves l again in the waters of the Dvina where they had been baptized at the point of ] German swords, and sent the water:
 back to Germany as evidence that they renouneed the new religion.
 "Then and later Latvia shook of German political control but welcomed II economic cooperation of Germans. Rigs
 became a prominent member of tht
 Hanseatic League in the thirteenth cen tury and kept a prominent place 1T world trade until 1914 when it stoo. second only to St. Petersburg arnont Baltic cities, in it's shipping.
 T Through the centuries of poftica 1 saasaur tha Cerman mefchants in La.
 via accomplished what invaders coul' not achieve. They gained control o the land and thus of. the local govern , ments and held a position which ha been compared to that of the landet T gentry in England of a century age
 l This squir rearchy of the Baltic com { p-ises the Balts. And so enlightene' was their tyranny that when, about tn time of our Civil war, the Tsar began t
 Russifys the Baltic provinces the Lett
 and their neighbors resisted. They re