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Because Memel has the world's most complex electoral system, each of the 29 seats had to be voted for on a separate ballot by each of Memers 80,000 voters, making over 2,000.000 ballots. These had to be lugged to Kaunas, the Government seat, and there counted this week in an orgy of embittered tabulation. As the voting day was about to close, with thousands of Memelanders unable to vote because those ahead of them had required so much time to mark the hundreds of thousands of ballots, fierce riots broke out and in some districts polling boxes were ripped open, ballots destroyed. With the situation ripe for a possible uprising or Nazi coup, stanch Lithuanian Premier Juozas Tubelis in an emergency Cabinet session took the statesmanlike step of ordering a second day of balloting. Asked what bantamweight Lithuania would do if attacked by turkeyweight Germany, Premier Tubelis snapped: "Necessarily my country would mobilize and employ her uttermost forces."
Adolf Hitler's reply to this was to cross the Polish Corridor by train for the first time and, with high officers of the German General Staff, inspect East Prussian defenses adjoining Memel.