cause entitled him to a respectful hearing, delivered a powerful
speech[364] before the delegates assembled in plenary session on this
question of protecting ethnic and religious minorities. He covered
ground unsurveyed by the framers of the special treaties, and his
sincere tone lent weight to his arguments. Starting from the postulate
that the strength of latter-day states depends upon the widest
participation of all the elements of the population in the government of
the country, he admitted the peremptory necessity of abolishing
invidious distinctions between the various elements of the population
there, ethnic or religious. So far, he was at one with the spokesmen of
the Great Powers. Rumania, however, had already accomplished this by the
decree enabling her Jews to acquire full citizenship by expressing the
mere desire according to a simple formula. This act confers the full
rights of Rumanian citizens upon eight hundred thousand Jews. The Jewish
press of Bucharest had already given utterance to its entire
satisfaction. If, however, the Jews are now to be placed in a special
category, differentiated and kept apart from their fellow-citizens by
having autonomous institutions, by the maintenance of the German-Yiddish
dialect, which keeps alive the Teuton anti-Rumanian spirit, and by being
authorized to regard the Rumanian state as an inferior tribunal, from
which an appeal always lies to a foreign body--the government of the
Great Powers--this would be the most invidious of all distinctions, and
calculated to render the assimilation of the German-Yiddish-speaking
Jews to their Rumanian fellow-citizens a sheer impossibility. The
majority and the minority would then be systematically and definitely
estranged from each other; and, seeing this, the elemental instincts of
the masses might suddenly assume untoward forms, which the treaty, if
ratified, would be unavailing to prevent. But, however baneful for the
population, foreign protection is incomparably worse for the state,
because it tends to destroy the cement that holds the government and
people together, and ultimately to bring about disintegration. A classic
example of this process of disruption is Russia's well-meant protection
of the persecuted Christians in Turkey. In this case the motive was
admirable, the necessity imperative, but the result was the
dismemberment of Turkey and other changes, some of which one would like
to forget.
The delegation of Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, and Poland upheld M.
Bratiano's contentions in brief, pithy speeches. President Wilson's
lengthy rejoinder, delivered with more than ordinary sweetness,
deprecated M. Bratiano's comparison of the Allies' proposed intervention
with Russia's protection of the Christians of Turkey, and represented
the measure as emanating from the purest kindness. He said that the
Great Powers were now bestowing national existence or extensive
territories upon the interested states, actually guaranteeing their
frontiers, and therefore making themselves responsible for permanent
tranquillity there. But the treatment of the minorities, he added,
unless fair and considerate, might produce the gravest troubles and even
precipitate wars. Therefore it behooved the Powers in the interests of
all Europe, as of each of its individual members, to secure harmonious
relations, and, at any rate, to remove all manifest obstacles to their
establishment. "We guarantee your frontiers and your territories. That
means that we will send over arms, ships, and men, in case of necessity.
Therefore we possess the right and recognize the duty to hinder the
survival of a set of deplorable conditions which would render this
intervention unavoidable."
To this line of reasoning M. Bratiano made answer that all the helpful
maxims of good government are of universal application, and, therefore,
if this protection of minorities were, indeed, indispensable or
desirable, it should not be restricted to the countries of eastern
Europe, but should be extended to all without exception. For it is
inadmissible that two categories of states should be artificially
created, one endowed with full sovereignty and the other with
half-sovereignty. Such an arrangement would destroy the equality which
should lie at the base of a genuine League of Nations.
But the Powers had made up their minds, and the special treaties were
imposed on the unwilling governments. Thereupon the Rumanian Premier
withdrew from the Conference, and neither his Cabinet nor that of the
Jugoslavs signed the treaty with Austria at St.-Germain.
What happened after that is a matter of history.
Few politicians are conscious of the magnitude of the issue concealed by
the involved diplomatic phraseology of the obnoxious treaties, or of the
dangers to which their enactment will expose the minorities which they
were framed to protect, the countries whose hospitality those minorities
enjoy, and possibly other lands, which for the time being are seemingly
immune from all such perilous race problems. The calculable, to say
nothing of the unascertained, elements of the question might well cause
responsible statesmen to be satisfied with the feasible. The Jewish
elements in Europe, for centuries abominably oppressed, were justified
in utilizing to the fullest the opportunity presented by the
resettlement of the world in order to secure equality of treatment. And
it must be admitted that their organization is marvelous. For years I
championed their cause in Russia, and paid the penalty under the
governments of Alexander II and III.[365] The sympathy of every
unbiased man, to whatever race or religion he may belong, will naturally
go out to a race or a nation which is trodden underfoot, as were the
ill-starred Jews of Russia ever since the partition of Poland. But
equality one would have thought sufficient to meet the grievance. Full
equality without reservation. That was the view taken by numerous Jews
in Poland and Rumania, several of whom called on me in Paris and urged
me to give public utterance to their hopes that the Conference would
rest satisfied with equality and to their fear of the consequences of an
attempt to establish a privileged status. Why this position should exist
only in eastern Europe and not elsewhere, why it should not be extended
to other races with larger minorities in other countries, are questions
to which a satisfactory response could be given only by farther-reaching
and fateful changes in the legislation of the world.
One of the statesmen of eastern Europe made a forcible appeal to have
the minority clauses withdrawn. He took the ground that the principal
aim pursued in conferring full rights on the Jews who dwell among us is
to remove the obstacles that prevent them from becoming true and loyal
citizens of the state, as their kindred are in France, Italy, Britain,
and elsewhere. "If it is reasonable," he said, "that they should demand
all the rights possessed by their Rumanian and Polish fellow-subjects,
it is equally fair that they should take over and fulfil the correlate
duties, as does the remainder of the population. For the gradual
assimilation of all the ethnic elements of the community is our ideal,
as it is the ideal of the French, English, Italian, and other states.
"Isolation and particularism are the negative of that ideal, and operate
like a piece of iron or wood in the human body which produces ulceration
and gangrene. All our institutions should therefore be calculated to
encourage assimilation. If we adopt the opposite policy, we inevitably
alienate the privileged from the unprivileged sections of the community,
generate enmity between them, cause endless worries to the
administration and paralyze in advance our best-intentioned endeavors to
fuse the various ethnic ingredients of the nation into a homogeneous
whole.
"This argument applies as fully to the other national fragments in our
midst as to the Jews. It is manifest, therefore, that the one certain
result of the minority clause will be to impose domestic enemies on each
of the states that submits to it, and that it can commend itself only to
those who approve the maxim, _Divide et impera_.
"It also entails the noteworthy diminution of the sovereignty of the
state. We are to be liable to be haled before a foreign tribunal
whenever one of our minorities formulates a complaint against us.[366]
How easily, nay, how wickedly such complaints were filed of late may be
inferred from the heartrending accounts of pogroms in Poland, which have
since been shown by the Allies' own confidential envoys to be utterly
fictitious. Again, with whom are we to make the obnoxious stipulations?
With the League of Nations? No. We are to bind ourselves toward the
Great Powers, who themselves have their minorities which complain in
vain of being continually coerced. Ireland, Egypt, and the negroes are
three striking examples. None of their delegates were admitted to the
Conference. If the principle which those Great Powers seek to enforce be
worth anything, it should be applied indiscriminately to all minorities,
not restricted to those of the smaller states, who already have
difficulties enough to contend against."
The trend of continental opinion was decidedly opposed to this policy of
continuous control and periodic intervention. It would be unfruitful to
quote the sharp criticisms of the status of the negroes in the United
States.[367] But it will not be amiss to cite the views of two moderate
French publicists who have ever been among the most fervent advocates of
the Allied cause. Their comments deal with one of the articles[368] of
the special Minority Treaty which Poland has had to sign. It runs thus:
"Jews shall not be compelled to perform any act which constitutes a
violation of their Sabbath, nor shall they be placed under any
disability by reason of their refusal to attend courts of law or to
perform any legal business on their Sabbath. This provision, however,
shall not exempt Jews from such obligations as shall be imposed upon all
other Polish citizens for the necessary purposes of military service,
national defense, or the preservation of public order.
"Poland declares her intention to refrain from ordering or permitting
elections, whether general or local, to be held on a Saturday, nor will
registration for electoral or other purposes be compelled to be
performed on a Saturday."
M. Gauvain writes: "One may put the question, why respect for the
Sabbath is so peremptorily imposed when Sunday is ignored among several
of the Allied Powers. In France Christians are not dispensed from
appearing on Sundays before the assize courts. Besides, Poland is
further obliged not to order or authorize elections on a Saturday. What
precautions these are in favor of the Jewish religion as compared with
the legislation of many Allied states which have no such ordinances in
favor of Catholicism! Is the same procedure to be adopted toward the
Moslems? Shall we behold the famous Mussulmans of India, so opportunely
drawn from the shade by Mr. Montagu, demanding the insertion of clauses
to protect Islam? Will the Zionists impose their dogmas in Palestine? Is
the life of a nation to be suspended two, three, or four days a week in
order that religious laws may be observed? Catholicism has adapted
itself in practice to laic legislation and to the exigencies of modern
life. It may well seem that Judaism in Poland could do likewise. In
Rumania, the Jews met with no obstacle to the exercise of their
religion. Indeed, they had contrived in the localities to the north of
Moldavia, where they formed a majority, to impose their own customs on
the rest of the population. Jewish guardians of toll-bridges are known
to have barred the passage of these bridges on Saturdays, because, on
the one hand, their religion forbade them to accept money on that day,
and, on the other hand, they could allow no one to pass without paying.
The Big Four might have given their attention to matters more useful or
more pressing than enforcing respect for the Sabbath.
"It is comprehensible that M. Bratiano should have refused to accept in
advance the conditions which the Four or the Five may dictate in favor
of ethnic and religious minorities. Rumania before the war was a free
country governed congruously with the most modern principles. The
restrictions which she had enacted respecting foreigners in general, and
which were on the point of being repealed, did not exceed those which
the United States and the Dominion of Australia still apply with
remarkable tenacity. Why should the Cabinets of London and Washington
take so much to heart the lot of ethnic and religious minorities in
certain European countries while they themselves refuse to admit in the
Covenant of the Society of Nations the principle of the equality of
races? Their conduct is awakening among the states 'whose interests are
limited' the belief that they are the victims of an arbitrary policy.
And that is not without danger."[369]
Another eminent Frenchman, M. Denis Cochin, who until quite recently was
a Cabinet Minister, wrote: "The Conference, by imposing laws in favor of
minorities, has uselessly and unjustly offended our allies. These laws
oblige them to respect the usages of the Jews, to maintain schools for
them.... I have spent a large part of my career in demanding for French
Catholics exactly that which the Conference imposes elsewhere. The
Catholics pay taxes in money and taxes in blood. And yet there is no
budget for those schools in which their religion is taught; no liberty
for those schoolmasters who wear the ecclesiastical habit. I have seen a
doctor in letters, fellow of the university, driven from his class
because he was a Marist brother and did not choose to repudiate the
vocation of his youth. He died of grief. I have seen young priests,
after the long, laborious preparation necessary before they could take
part in the competition for a university fellowship, thrust aside at the
last moment and debarred from the competition because they wore the garb
of priests. Yet a year later they were soldiers. I have seen Father
Schell presented unanimously by the Institute and the Professional Corps
as worthy to receive a chair at the Collège de France, and refused by
the Minister. Yet I hereby affirm that if foreigners, even though they
were allies, even friends, were to meddle with imposing on us the
abrogation of these iniquitous laws, my protest would be uplifted
against them, together with that of M. Combes.[370] I would exclaim,
like Sganarelle's wife, 'And what if I wish to be beaten?' I hold
tyranny in horror, but I hold foreign intervention in greater horror
still. Let us combat bad laws with all our strength, but among
ourselves."[371]
The minority treaties tend to transform each of the states on which it
is imposed into a miniature Balkans, to keep Europe in continuous
turmoil and hinder the growth of the new and creative ideas from which
alone one could expect that union of collective energy with individual
freedom which is essential to peace and progress. Modern history affords
no more striking example of the force of abstract bias over the
teachings of experience than this amateur legislation which is
scattering seeds of mischief and conflict throughout Europe.
* * * * *
Casting a final glance at the results of the Conference, it would be
ungracious not to welcome as a precious boon the destruction of Prussian
militarism, a consummation which we owe to the heroism of the armies
rather than to the sagacity of the lawgivers in Paris. The restoration
of a Polish state and the creation or extension of the other free
communities at the expense of the Central Empires are also most welcome
changes, which, however, ought never to have been marred by the
disruptive wedge of the minority legislation. Again, although the League
is a mill whose sails uselessly revolve, because it has no corn to
grind, the mere fact that the necessity of internationalism was solemnly
proclaimed as the central idea of the new ordering, and that an effort,
however feeble, was put forth to realize it in the shape of a covenant
of social and moral fellowship, marks an advance from which there can be
no retrogression.
Actuality was thereby imparted to the idea, which is destined to remain
in the forefront of contemporary politics until the peoples themselves
embody it in viable institutions. What the delegates failed to realize
is the truth that a program of a league is not a league.
On the debit side much might be added to what has already been said. The
important fact to bear in mind--which in itself calls for neither praise
nor blame--is that the world-parliament was at bottom an Anglo-Saxon
assembly whose language, political conceptions, self-esteem, and
disregard of everything foreign were essentially English. When speaking,
the faces of the principal delegates were turned toward the future, and
when acting they looked toward the past. As a thoroughly English press
organ, when alluding to the League of Nations, puts it: "We have done
homage to that entrancing ideal by spatchcocking the Convention into the
Treaty. There it remains as a finger-post to point the way to a new
heaven on earth. But we observe that the Treaty itself is a good old
eighteenth-century piece, drawing its inspiration from mundane and
practical considerations, and paying a good deal more than lip service
to the principle of the balance of power."[372]
That is a fair estimate of the work achieved by the delegates. But they
sinned in their way of doing it. If they had deliberately and
professedly aimed at these results, and had led the world to look for
none other, most of the criticisms to which they have rendered
themselves open would be pointless. But they raised hopes which they
refused to realize, they weakened if they did not destroy faith in
public treaties, they intensified distrust and race hatred throughout
the world, they poured strong dissolvents upon every state on the
European Continent, and they stirred up fierce passions in Russia, and
then left that ill-starred nation a prey to unprecedented anarchy. In a
word, they gathered up all the widely scattered explosives of
imperialism, nationalism, and internationalism, and, having added to
their destructiveness, passed them on to the peoples of the world as
represented by the League of Nations. Some of them deplored the mess in
which they were leaving the nations, without, however, admitting the
causal nexus between it and their own achievements.
General Smuts, before quitting Paris for South Africa, frankly admitted
that the Peace Treaty will not give us the real peace which the peoples
hoped for, and that peace-making would not begin until after the signing
of the Treaty. The _Echo de Paris_ wrote: "As for us, we never believed
in the Society of Nations."[373] And again: "The Society of Nations is
now but a bladder, and nobody would venture to describe it as a
lantern."[374] The Bolshevist dictator Lenin termed it "an organization
to loot the world."[375]
The Allies themselves are at sixes and sevens. The French are suspicious
of the British. A large section of the American people is profoundly
dissatisfied with the part played by the English and the French at the
Conference; Italy is stung to the quick by the treatment she received
from France, Britain, and the United States; Rumania loathes the very
names of those for whom she staked her all and sacrificed so much; in
Poland and Belgium the English have lost the consideration which they
enjoyed before the Conference; the Greeks are wroth with the American
delegates; the majority of Russians literally execrate their ex-Allies
and turn to the Germans and the Japanese.
"The resettlement of central Europe," writes an American journal,[376]
"is not being made for the tranquillity of the liberated principles,
but for the purposes of the Great Powers, among whom France is the
active, and America and Britain the passive, partners. In Germany its
purpose is the permanent elimination of the German nation as a factor in
European politics.... We cannot save Europe by playing the sinister game
now being played. There is no peace, no order, no security in it....
What it can do is to aggravate the mischief and intensify the schisms."
A distinguished American, who is a consistent friend of England,[377] in
a review article affirmed that the proposed League of Nations is slowly
undermining the Anglo-American Entente. "There is in America a growing
sense of irritation that she should be forever entangled in the
spider-web of European politics." ... And if the Senate in the supposed
interests of peace should ratify the League, he adds, "In my judgment no
greater harm could result to Anglo-American unity than such reluctant
consent."[378]
Some of Mr. Wilson's fellow-countrymen who gave him their whole-hearted
support when he undertook to establish a régime of right and justice sum
up the result of his labors in Paris as follows:[379]
"His solemn warning against special alliances emerged as a special
alliance with Britain and France. His repeated condemnations of secret
treaties emerges as a recognition that 'they could not honorably be
brushed aside,' even though they conflicted with equally binding public
engagements entered into after they had been written. Openly arrived at
covenants were not openly arrived at. The removal, so far as possible,
of all economic barriers was applied to German barriers, and
accompanied by the blockade of a people with whom we have never been at
war. The adequate guaranties to be given and taken as respects armaments
were taken from Germany and given to no one. The 'unhampered and
unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own
political development' promised to Russia, and defined as the 'acid
test,' has been worked out by Mr. Wilson and others to a point where so
cautious a man as Mr. Asquith says he regards it with 'bewilderment and
apprehension.' The righting of the wrong done in 1871 emerges as a
concealed annexation of the boundary of 1814. The 'clearly recognizable
lines of nationality' which Italy was to obtain has been wheedled into
annexations which have moved Viscount Bryce to denounce them. 'The
freest opportunity of autonomous development' promised the peoples of
Austria-Hungary failed to define the Austrians as peoples...."
Whatever the tests one applies to the work of the Conference--ethical,
social, or political--they reveal it as a factor eminently calculated to
sap high interests, to weaken the moral nerve of the present generation,
to fan the flames of national and racial hatred, to dig an abyss between
the classes and the masses, and to throw open the sluice-gates to the
inrush of the waves of anarchist internationalities. Truth, justice,
equity, and liberty have been twisted and pressed into the service of
economico-political boards. In the United States the people who prided
themselves on their aloofness are already fighting over European
interests. In Europe every nation's hand is raised against its
neighbors, and every people's hand against its ruling class. Every
government is making its policy subservient to the needs of the future
war which is universally looked upon as an unavoidable outcome of the
Versailles peace. Imperialism and militarism are striking roots in soil
where they were hitherto unknown. In a word, Prussianism, instead of
being destroyed, has been openly adopted by its ostensible enemies, and
the huge sacrifices offered up by the heroic armies of the foremost
nations are being misused to give one half of the world just cause to
rise up against the other half.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[339] A contemporary of Goethe. His works were republished by Herzog in
the year 1907.
[340] _The Daily Telegraph_, January 28, 1919.
[341] _The Daily Telegraph_, January 31, 1919.
[342] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), February 13, 1919.