Catholic Minority in Roumania Plans to Appeal to the League

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

Despite any impression created to the contrary, the religious minorities of Roumania still have many complaints, chief among which is an unjust school policy, states a despatch from Bucharest to the National Catholic Welfare Council News Service.

That this fact is not more generally known is due in large measure to bad faith on the part of the Roumanian Government, the despatch states. In perhaps no other country do Government declarations and official acts differ so frequently as in Roumania.

In the face of this situation, according to a prominent and respected German Catholic leader in Roumania, the Catholics are determined to obtain full equality and justice for their schools. If necessary, says this leader, they probably will appeal again to the League of Nations to bring their plight to the attention of the world. Under no circumstances are they willing to suffer longer a state of affairs that is both unusual and unsatisfactory.

Only a short time ago, Minister for Home Affairs Duca wrote to the Union of Roumanian Jews in America stating that “the Roumanian Government is to conduct in respect to the minorities a policy animated by the most broadminded liberalism.” In the face of this promise, the action of the Government, particularly the Ministry of Education, is just the reverse.

Last May nearly all of the minority schools were deprived of their rights as public schools. Among the institutions affected were even the Protestant Saxon intermediate schools, which have a history of service centuries old. The sentiment stirred in minority circles by this action was so great that the Government yielded and gave back the rights to some of these schools, but not to all of them.

Today, there is not the slightest vestige of equal treatment with regard to schools, despite the fact that Minister Duca wrote that “equal treatment of all minorities is a necessity which we are attending to.” The simple fact is that the Ministry of Education is trying to crush the private schools, which includes the Catholic, and the force of its efforts is being felt most seriously by the Catholic German schools in the Banat, states the report.

Many things in Roumania are incomprehensible to a foreigner. For example, there is the distinction made between schools of religious Orders and other confessional schools, which discriminates against Catholice schools, and the incorporating of two such contradictory provisions as Articles 15 and 37 in the same law. The unjust distinctions may be explained by the intolerance of the Minister of Education, and the incongruity of the law’s provisions by the unusual procedure by which the Roumanian law was accomplished.

The original draft of the law was much worse than the present form Minister Anghelesen wanted to have nothing to do with confessinal schools, although in former Hungary all the Roumanian schools, as well as the others, had been denominational and on an equal footing with the Government schools. The Hungarian Churches–Catholic and Protestant–protested without avail, then lodged complaints with the League of Nations.

Minister Anghelescu thereupon began fresh negotiations, and made considerable concessions, which were agreed to in writing by the Churches and the Ministry. The protocol was sent to Geneva and the League of Nations took note of it as a peaceful adjustment of the complaints.

When telegraphic advice to this effect was received from Geneva, the Minister for Education rushed the reading in Parlament of the original draft, in which were included during the special debate only a certain number of the points of agreement, others being omitted. Thus the League of Nations was misled. In this way Article 15, which had been agreed upon, was included in the law, but so was Article 37 of the original draft. It is this latter article which has since been used in an effort to throttle the Order schools in the Banat.

Just now, new negotiations are being carried on in regard to the school problem. Anghelescu may perhaps make some concessions, but the Catholics intend to insist steadily upon full school equality, the despatch says.

The Rev. Louis Craig Cornish, of Boston, Unitarian leader, was charged with anti-Roumanian prejudice and with having taken steps to prevent Roumania securing a loan in the United States by Audrei Popovici, Secretary of the Roumanian Legation at Washington in an interview he gave recently to the Washington correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Mr. Popovici accused the Rev. Cornish of being one of the leaders of a group which has done everything within its power to harm Roumania. He charged that the group had systematically canvassed international bankers in New York for the purpose of adversely influencing them against making a loan to Roumania. Mr. Cornish went so far, Mr. Popovici said, as to call a meeting of bankers with this object in view at the time of Queen Marie’s visit to the United States, Mr. Cornish having informed the bankers that the Queen had come to America for the express purpose of securing a loan.