(J. T. A. Mail Service)
Canon Tumas, who accompanied the President of the Republic, M. Smetona, on his recent tour of the country, publishes in the Press a descripton of the manner in which the Jews received the President. The reprsentatives of the Jews everywhere, he states, expressed the hope that Lithuania would regain her capital Vilna. The President replied to the Jewish delegations.
“Yes, we shall have Vilna back again. We shall enter Vilna with a clean conscience, as if we were going to Jerusalem, without enquiring into the religion of each individual. Our hero Vitowt gave the Jews much freedom. Nor shall we withhold freedom from the Jews. But we demand of them that they should have in mind the needs of the state and should not form a state within a state. The Jews will do well to depend on the Lithuanian State instead of depending on certain papers and instead of remembering that the Jewish rights were guaranteed at Versaiiles,” the President said.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
