long since commenced, has been sealed by Britain's practical intervention on her behalf in her struggle against Bolshevism. This alliance is likely to spread to Finland, which is on very good terms with Esthonia and Great Britain, and ready to accept their friends as her own.

I wish to impress this point on you, the most important, namely, the position of Esthonia. It is so important that her strong neighbors have not allowed her to have independence for seven centuries, but her stock is so sturdy that the minute she had an opportunity she came out with a government that has stuck right through the revolution, the Bolshevik government and the German occupation. That same organization would be steady and dependable to any nation seeing fit to ally herself with Esthonia.

I understand that my time is up. I have tried to keep to essentials.

The CHAIRMAN. We are much obliged.

Mr. BATTLE. I will ask permission to introduce to the committee the spokesman for Latvia, the land that lies just south of Esthonia. This gentleman is a native Lett. The country of Latvia consists of three Provinces, Courland, Livonia, and Latvia. The gentleman who will speak to you is very well known in New York, a minister of the gospel, the Rev. Carl Podin-

The CHAIRMAN. Is he an American citizen?

Mr. BATTLE. Yes, sir. He has been associated for years with the Seamen's Church Institute there, and those of you who know conditions in New York know the wonderful work that that institute has done for many years for our seamen. It is on South Street, and each night it cares for 800 seamen. It has done a good work for these seamen. Dr. Podin is associated with that institute. He is a patriotic American citizen. He is a native of Latvia, and is well qualified to speak to you.

STATEMENT OF REV. CARL PODIN, OF NEW YORK CITY.

Mr. PODIN. Gentlemen of the committee, it is a great privilege to stand here before you this morning. My heart is touched with the great possibilities that are before you and before my country this. present moment. The story of my native land is very much like that of Esthonia, about which the commander has just spoken to you. Beginning with Ainazi and leading down along the Esthonian border-which country I am proud to say is a very friendly neighbor to the Letts and then on the east side by Russia, and then 600 miles of border line between us and our friendly neighbors the Lithuanians. There lies the country of Latvia. For 700 years they have preserved a national consciousness and a national soul and while under the Polish, Swedish, Russian, and German dominion she has still preserved her language, her morals, her purposes, and her religion. It is located on that seashore which has been governed by all these countries, and from time to time has been dominated by them, and it has been a test for these people. They are strong, but it took the very soul of these people to maintain their integrity.

It is about 64,000 square miles large. It has 2,055,000 inhabitants. Forty thousand of my native people are in this country, and for 25 years and a little over I have ministered to these people in the

great city of New York, and have been their friend and their pastormore a friend than a pastor without a dollar of salary all these years, for I am an American and want to do all I can for them.

In my experience I have learned that that country is worthy of this great country's recognition. Our forefathers did not suffer as much as these people have suffered. I was there as a boy and in the revolution of 1906 and 1907, and I saw the refugees in my own home and I know what they have suffered.

It is also a part of the wall of which the commander has just spoken and it has resisted very, very strongly, and during this war you will remember that Russia refused to give them any assistance until they were all beaten back, and then the Lettish commander assumed the responsibility and broke the advancing line and the Letts saved their land from devastation. That country is in ruins. The greatest battles have been fought there. The country has been devastated and it has been exploited to the utmost by the Russians as they evacuated, taking all the machinery and taking the most elligible people with them into Russia where there are thousands of Letts unable to return, and of the 350,000 of my people thus taken. many of them are forced by changing condition now to serve in different parts of Siberia.

The Germans as they came in and captured everything gave receipts which have never been paid for. So that the country. between the two of them, has been cleaned out not only in property but also the land, the most fertile, has been reduced to a wilderness, and the people are removed or supplanted by Russia, exactly as the commander has said.

In 1906 the Russians were forced out, and the released men were imported on Good Friday. With my silk hat and Prince Albert I traveled with this humble population without a seat, there being only standing room in these cars.

From the commercial point of view that country has been wonderful. I have statistics, but you would be wearied by statistics. It is sufficient to say that millions and millions of dollars' worth of business has been done by this country; and may I say that even now England has recognized Finland as an independent State. and I come to-day for the purpose of beseeching this august body to grant this same favor to the needy souls in order that they may be saved. England, France, and Japan have recognized her independence and Japan has already sent its ambassador there to represent its interests in that country.

Regarding the population, there are 2,500,000, of which the maority are Lettish. The country contains 64,196 square miles. larger than Switzerland, larger than Denmark, larger than the Netherlands or Belgium. And therefore i claim that our country is well able to govern itself.

In schools it is on a par with the United States. In high-schools it is higher than even Germany itself. in literature--Lettish language books are produced in greater numbers than in other countries com pared with its population. in religion it is mostly Protestant, but it is friendly with its Roman Catholic neighbors on the south. Russia for all these years tried to force its religion on these people: tried to Russianize this territory by force. The nation desired its own schools, its own judges; yet Russia from the very outset forced the Russian

language, in 1889, on the people, and Russian judges who could not speak one word of the Lettish language, and forced upon us Russian books and influence and Russian systems and by subtle camouflaged bribes tried to induce the people to become really Russian. It is not alone Germany that had the world dream, it was Russia as well. She sought by force and coercion to get these people under one language and one rule, one monetary system, and one government. And that is not dead yet, sir. Even if she should become a republic, as they desire, Russia is seeking forevermore to overcome that influence. When the passenger boats were commandeered, she could not find any better men to command them than our own captains, while the crews were of a different nationality. In all the higher posts of intellectual life Russia has chosen our men, from the Baltic to Archangel, and from Riga to Vladivostok. In all the posts where she needed men of superior intellectual attainments she has chosen my poor folk. Amid struggles and privations, amid fierce persecution under the Russian Government and under German exploitation, she has still maintained a high standard of education and of integrity, which can not be excelled for a long time.

I would be glad if any of you would interrupt me with any questions which you may desire to ask, because my heart is very full on this subject and while I am an American, these people are very dear to me, for I have a dear mother whose eye was torn out by shrapnel, and I have a brother who had a house of 64 rooms, which awas destroyed. My brother was a prison worker to whom the greatest liberties were given to visit the prisons, and he gave shelter to 60 poor exiles. They imprisoned my brother and kept him in chains for a long time, and burned the house which sheltered these people. No man has made a greater record in prison work than my brother. My heart is over there, and I know what these Esthonians and Letts have gone through. They have at the present time a government by a state council, and they are waiting for the time to come when a constitutional assembly can meet. They had their representatives at the peace conference, and they are keeping abreast with things there, but they have been oppressed, and to-day, contrary to the great peace treaty, part XIV, section 2, article 433, which provides:

And in order to insure the restoration of peace and good government in the Baltic Provinces and Lithuania, all German troops at present in the said territories shall return to within the frontiers of Germany as soon as the Governments of the principal allied and associated powers shall think the moment suitable, having regard to the internal situation of these territories. These troops shall abstain from all requisitions and seizures and from any other coercive measures, with a view to obtaining supplies intended for Germany, and shall in no way interfere with such measures for national defense as may be adopted by the provisional governments of Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

That provision has not been carried out to this present moment. I have a letter in my pocket written on the 7th day of August stating that the same bondage is upon the neck of my people. There is a gentleman here, Mr. Johnson, who has some moving pictures, and with your permission he will show you conditions as late as the 26th of May. I remember that date very well because it was my birthday. That day was fraught and full of the most awful and horrible things. I will ask that Mr. Johnson be given the privilege of showing these actual things. A clever American obtained the privilege from

a German officer who became intoxicated-I do not know whether by Scotch or American whisky-to take these pictures which do not lie and are not made up, but are real genuine things, so that you may see what conditions there have actually been. I will ask that Mr. Johnson be given the privilege of exhibiting these pictures. In the meanwhile if there are any questions you wish to ask me I will be glad to answer them.

As to the Bolshevik question among my people, I will be absolutely truthful and correct and will tell the whole truth. Between 20 and 25 per cent of my people are Bolsheviki, but these people never had any rooting in any of our social, moral, or commercial life. They are drifters and they are not accountable for themselves in any manner. shape, of form. I have met them here and elsewhere. I know how some of them have been embittered. They have seen their fathers and mothers murdered. One boy just returned found six of his brothers and his father slain, his house burned, his mother living in a mud hut. Less than four weeks ago that man returned. His soul was embittered, even as my own soul at times has been embittered. Our Government is strong against this very thing, and my people are absolutely capable of coping with it in the eastern and southern parts where the Bolsheviki are now. They are capable of holding their own, providing they are given a free rein.

Mr. BATTLE. On behalf of the Ukrainians I want to present Mr. Emil Revyuk.

STATEMENT OF MR. EMIL REVYUK.

Mr. REVYUK. Mr. Chairman and Senators, I appear here on behalf of the largest of the nationalities of Europe resurrected by this war. My native country, where I was born, is the first nationality of Europe as regards its population. It is second among them as regards its area. It is first as regards its natural resources.

My country borders in the south on the Black Sea. Then it borders more or less on the Carpathian Mountains, reaching as far as the Desna River, and going east, not shown on this map, as far as the River Don. These are, more or less roughly speaking, the boundaries of Ukrainia. Our neighbors are Roumania, Hungary, the Poles, the White Russians, the Great Russians, the different Mongolian tribes in the east, and the inhabitants of the Crimea in the south. Our nationality is Slavic and our people are of the purest Slavic type. There is hardly an admixture of any other race in an anthropological respect in our nationality.

The population of Ukrainia is 50,000,000, of whom 38.000.000 are Ukrainian. The rest are small 'minorities of different nationalities, like the Jews, the Poles, Great Russians, White Russians, and so on scattered like islands in the great area of Ukrainia, which is 330,000 square miles, or about one and one-half times as large as Germany or France, and seven times as large as the State of New York. That area is not only large in extent, but it is also very rich in natural resources. It is one stretch of black earth soil, especially well adapted for the production of wheat. It has also all the mineral resources which are necessary for the development of industry. It has very rich oil deposits in the west, which is called Galicia, and it has very rich deposits of iron ore and coal in the east, near the River Don.

If to these natural resources of the Ukrainia you add her seaport of Odessa and her rivers, navigable or which can be made navigable very easily, like the Dnieper and the Dniester and the Don, you can see why Ukrainia has been called the granary of Europe. And the very fact that it was a granary, well stocked with these resources, was the reason why we have never been let alone to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Our history is one long fight for the right to enjoy the fruits of our labor on that land. From the very dawn of history, when the Ukrainians first settled on that soil, we had to fight the nomadic tribes of Mongolia pouring into Europe. It was the Ukrainians who were first to withstand the pressure of the Tartar invasion. At that time our defenses around the city of Kiev were broken down and then we had to enter into a union with the Lithuanians, our neighbors in the north. That was the only union in which we were successful. They were the only people with whom we lived peaceably, without tearing at each other's throats, and that is the reason why we would like to have that union also in the future. When Ukrainians entered into a union with Poland, Poland proved to be an oppressor.

Then we Ukrainians organized a strong military power and organized in the seventeenth century the first republic in that part of Europe. But that republic entered into a new union with Russia, which proved disastrous to us. Then came the partition of Poland, and for another century about nine-tenths of our population was dominated by Russia and only one-tenth of the population was dominated by Austria-Hungary, divided between the Province of Galicia, which belonged to Austria, and the part within the territorial limits of Hungary.

The Russian Ukrainians were strongly persecuted by the Russian Government, which went even so far as to prohibit the use of the Ukrainian language in the schools, in the public life, and in the churches, and the Ukrainians organized the first popular government in Russia after the Russian revolution. When the Bolsheviki came into power, through Bolshevik intrigue with Germany, it was forced to make peace with Germany several days before a similar peace was made with the Bolsheviki themselves. The Ukrainians then had the opportunity to know the Germans, and when the Germans came to Ukrainia, then the Ukrainian peasantry rose in one uprising against. the German oppressor. There were as many as 200,000 Ukrainian soldiers fighting the Germans, and the result was that Germany had to keep an army of more than a million well-equipped soldiers in the East, a fact which counted for very much in this war. When Germany saw later that the Ukrainian Government was going to rise against her, she overthrew that government and set up a government headed by a Russian by the name of Kuropatzki.

When the German forces broke down in the west, then the Ukranian party organized a new Government, the so-called directorate, composed of the representatives of all the Ukrainian parties. That directorate has remained until the present time the governing body of Ukrainia. In spite of the great number of its enemies, in spite of the fact that it is fought in the east by the Bolsheviki, in spite of the fact that it is fought in the west by the Polish militarists, in spite of the fact that it is attacked by the Roumanians in the south, it still is holding the greater part of the Ukraine, practically the whole right bank of the Dniester River. That government, which, as I said, is