GalleryFreedom after Seven Hundred Years
The service that these border States have rendered the world in stemming the tide of Bolshevism can hardly be emphasised too strongly. Onslaught after onslaught of the Bolshevists had to be met and countered, while in the rear German intrigues were afoot. The Prussians, too, received material and moral support in their aggression from the landowning nobility, the descendants of the German military adventurers who had invaded the country in the twelfth century, whose one ambition was to retain the land which they were still holding—no less than half Latvia—and which they were aware the Letts, if victorious, would ultimately require at their hands.
By depleting at great risk their eastern front, the Letts turned against the enemy force in the rear, and after a desperate struggle, lasting nearly three months, succeeded in driving the Prussians over the frontier (Dec. 1919). The victorious army at once turned its attention to the Bolshevists, but not for some seven weary weeks of further fighting were the last shattered Russian regiments expelled from Latvian territory. Then, for the first time in seven hundred years, since they lost their ancient sovereignty to the Teutonic Crusaders, did the Lettish people breathe the air of freedom.
In Western Europe very little is known of the ravages wrought in Latvia either by the Great War or by the Russo-German invasions subsequent to the Armistice. It is estimated that quite 60 per cent. of Latvian industry was destroyed. In 1914 there were 100,000 industrial workers employed in Riga alone, whereas in 1921 the number for the whole of Latvia was less than 2,500.
Heavy Price of Liberty
Agricultural interests appear to have suffered the heaviest of all. Rural districts were cut up by dug-outs and covered with wire entanglements, while the number of farmhouses destroyed ran into many thousands. In the whole of the country 1,347,000 acres of arable land (about one half of the total area under cultivation before the Great War) were left fallow.
Latvia, in comparison with the prosperous country of pre-war days became a desert. This has in truth to be admitted, in spite of the countless brave efforts that have been made, not unsuccessfully, at reconstruction. But Liberty must ever be bought at tremendous cost, and Latvia has paid full price. She has no regrets for her sacrifices, and in the words of one of her own stout-hearted sons, "has gladly suffered the exigencies of the war, for they were the price of her newly-won independence—and if need be she will suffer more." And as one travels through the country, the numerous derelict houses and waste places call forth a feeling of admiration that despair did not overwhelm the people while fighting their up-hill battle of constructing something out of nothing.
Constitution of the New Free State
For administrative purposes the country is divided into four districts: Livonia or Livland, Courland, Semgale, and Latgale. The total area comprises nearly 25,000 square miles, and its population is about 1,813,000 persons. Until the convocation of the Constituent
