Debate in House of Lords on Minorities Problem: Some People May Think I Am Infected with Minority Ge

I fear that some people may think that I am infected with the minority germ, Lord Dickinson, former President of the International Federation of League of Nations Societies and Chairman of its Minorities Section, said in opening a debate in the House of Lords last night on the protection of National Minorities. Many people, he went on, will say that this House or this Parliament have really nothing to do, or may have nothing to do, with the conditions of these minorities. But as a matter of fact, this question is very specially our affair because the British nation have guaranteed the minorities’ rights. We are signatories to these Minority Treaties. They were Treaties entered into by a certain number of States immediately after the War, by which, as your Lordships know, they undertook to give certain rights to racial and religious minorities. They are also Treaties signed by representatives of this Empire and others of the great Powers, and they were produced under circumstances which I think it is important that we should never forget. M. Clemenceau, when he presented to the President of the Polish Republic the Polish Minorities Treaties for signature, explained that this was not the first time when Treaties had been drawn up for the purpose of protecting racial or religious minorities. And he said this: “The principal Allied and Associated Powers are of the opinion that they would be false to the responsibility which rests upon them if on this occasion they departed from what has become an established tradition. In this connection I must also recall to your consideration the fact that it is to the endeavours and sacrifices of the Powers in whose name I am addressing you that the Polish nation owes the recovery of its independence. It is by their decision that Polish sovereignty is being re-established over the territories in question, and that the inhabitants of these territories are being incorporated in the Polish nation. It is on the support which the resources of these Powers will afford to the League of Nations that for the future Poland will to a large extent depend for the secure possession of these territories. There rests, therefore, upon these Powers an obligation which they cannot evade to secure in the most permanent and solemn form guarantees for certain essential rights which will afford to the inhabitants the necessary protection whatever changes may take place in the internal constitution of the Polish State”

It is in pursuance of that declaration that the Minority Treaties were concluded, and they are now, either in the form of Treaty or in the form of voluntary acceptance, binding on some fourteen or fifteen States. They lay down certain very definite propositions.

There are in Europe at least 30 million people belonging to a racial or religious minority, Lord Dickinson continued, and if you add Russia and Turkey, there are easily double that figure. Not only are they situated everywhere, and not only do they in the aggregate possess this large number of members, but they are drawing together. In the last few years there has been formed a new organisation, an organisation which calls itself the Conference of Nationalities. It conists entirely of representatives of minorities from twenty or more than twenty different countries. The question is one that urgently needs attention, and I think that the League of Nations has not yet given it sufficient attention.

I welcome the statement made by our Foreign Secretary before the League of Nations Council the other day, Lord Dickinson concluded, that “questions concerning the application of Minority Treaties are not national but international questions, and they are questions in which all have a common duty and a common interest”.

That would seem to be a truism, but it is the first time that it has really been formally announced as being the principle by which the application of the Minority Treaties is to be guided.

MINORITIES QUESTION IMMENSELY IMPORTANT SAYS LORD CECIL: MIS-GOVERNMENT OF RELIGIOUS MINORITIES CREATES INTERNATIONAL EFFECT EVEN MORE THAN OF RACIAL MINORITIES

Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, who followed, said that the question was immensely important. I do not think it is often realised how very important for the peace of the world this question of minorities is. It is not so much that it is the obvious interest and duty of everyone to hope for just treatment of all human beings in all parts of the world. That is an ideal which many of us would like to see realised, but of course we all recognise that it is quite out of the question at the present time. There are injustices, they are very deplorable and we should like to see them corrected, but we have to recognise that, even in this exceptionally favoured counntry of our own, injustices still take place from time to time. It is not, therefore, so much the question of injustice that seems to me important in this matter as the actual international effect of the misgovernment of racial and perhaps even more of religious minorities in the different countries of Europe.

Lord Parmoor, the President of the Council, replying for the Government, explained the procedure of the League of Nations in investigating complaints brought by minorities. Unless there was some machinery by which the allegations of a minority could be carefully sifted and considered, he said, it would be a very invidious thing to bring an accusation against one of your colleagues in the Council without having some means of adequate preliminary enquiry. At first the only way of access to the League of Nations Council was through a member of the Council. I think that was obviously insufficient. There was obviously ground for a feeling among the minorities that they could not bring their case adequately before the Council under those conditions. Now they can petition the Secretariat, and if their petition is in proper form it should be forwarded by the Secretary General to the Government alleged to be in default for its observations. I do not say that that procedure is completely satisfactory. It is not likely to be. It has been gradually evolved. But if you add to that reference to the Court at The Hague and something in the nature of a Permanent Minorities Commission, I think you would have a procedure which as far as possible might ensure justice in this very difficult subject. Lord Parmoor added that as regards a Permanent Minorities Commission the British Delegation at Geneva last year had expressed an open view and the general view at the present time is that under existing conditions, it is not possible. I have to deal with this matter carefully, Lord Parmoor concluded on this point, as it might give rise to suspicion and difficulties as between different countries, but that is at the present time the position as I understand it.