One of the statesmen of eastern Europe made a forcible appeal to have the minority clauses withdrawn.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.