J.D.B. News Letter

(By Our London Correspondent)

The report submitted by Lucien Wolf, secretary of the Joint Foreign Committee, to the meeting of the Board of Jewish Deputies referred to the statement made by Dr. Walko, the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, in the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Hungarian Upper House, that the Committee of Three of the League of Nations which, in accordance with the established procedure, had considered the petitions of the Joint Foreign Committee and the Alliance Israelite, had accepted the amended law as disposing of the question, and had declared the incident closed.

In thus dealing with the question, the report says, it is very doubtful whether the Committee of Three has acted within the scope of its mandate. Under the Treaties and the Tittoni Report of October 22, 1920, the task of dealing with infractions of the Minorities Treaties is expressly reserved to the Council of the League, and the socalled “Committees of Three” are only sub-committees appointed by the president of the Council “to assist the Council in the exercise of its rights and duties.” This is laid down in the resolution of the Council of October 25, 1920, under which the Committees of Three are appointed.

It is true that on September 5, 1923, in a series of resolutions on procedure, the Council stated that the work of the Committees of Three “shall be undertaken with the sole object of determining whether one or more members of the Council should draw the attention of the Council to an infraction of the treaties.” But this does not give the committees the right of dealing with infractions on their own responsibility, and it obviously only refers to cases where the alleged infractions have not been proved. Nevertheless, the Committees of Three seem to have accepted this resolution as giving them full power to negotiate understandings with offending Governments without reference to the Council. It is alleged that the Council and the Assembly approved this procedure by the acceptance of a report on the subject which was presented by the secretary-general in September, 1925. This, however, is doubtful.

In any event, the claim of the Committees of Three to act independently of the Council is not calculated to serve the public interest, and still less the cause of the minorities. It completes a system of adjudication in secret which undermines the confidence of the minorities in the treaties, and which may easily, make for miscarriages of justice. Hitherto, the public has been allowed to know something of what is being done by the reports of the Committees of Three to the Council, but now that these reports are no longer considered necessary, an impenetrable veil of mystery is drawn over the whole process of dealing with the petitions of aggrieved minorities. That the system may easily make for miscarriages of justice was proved last May in the case of a minorities petition against the Roumanian Government. This was also settled without reference to the Council, and solely on assurances of the Roumanian Government which in the following December were proved to be absolutely worthless.

In the case of the Hungarian Numerus Clausus the action of the Committee of Three in declaring the incident closed is all the more inexplicable because, at the time the incident was not in fact closed, inasmuch as the Hungarian amending bill, which was designed to meet the grievances of the Jewish minority, had not yet become law.

The action of the Committee of Three raises an important question of principle on which public action should be taken at the earliest possible moment.

The Joint Foreign Committee has resolved to communicate this report to the League of Nations and to the foreign office, Mr. Wolf stated.

With regard to the Hungarian Numerus Clausus question the report says that the tone of the debates in the Hungarian Parliament on the amended Numerus Clausus Law confirms the view expressed in previous reports that the law in its new shape removes the grievance which was the subject of the appeal addressed to the League of Nations by the Joint Foreign Committee and the Alliance Israelite in 1925. It is true that the numerical limitation of acces to the universities is still maintained, and that within this limitation certain social and economic preferences have been enacted; but these provisions are free of racial and religious discrimination, and it is even possible that the new categories of students, which give a special place to the industrial and commercial classes, may operate favorably to the Jews, owing to their urban concentration. There is, of course, still the danger that the new law, like the old, may not be applied in good faith, but the committee cannot well act upon this hypothesis, and were it to do so it would not obtain a hearing. Moreover, if the law is mis-applied to the detriment of Jewish students, there is nothing to prevent a fresh appeal to the League of Nations.

The main defect of the new law, apart from its limitation of the total number of students, is that it substitutes moral for educational tests, and in this way facilitates and arbitrary selection of students which in the hands of anti-Semitic professors may prove dangerous. This, however, is a defect which is likely to right itself, as its injurious incidence is of far wider scope than a possible differentiation against Jewish students. By abandoning the precise test of matriculation the law prejudices the Hungarian universities in comparison with all the great seats of learning in other countries. It has indeed already had this effect by excluding Hungary from the movement initiated by the League of Naions for securing a certain international equivalence of university degrees by means of conventions providing for the reciprocal recognition of the validity of certain classes of such degrees. Some forty of these conventions have lately been concluded, but Hungary does not figure in any of them. It is understood that this is due to the fact that under the “‘Numerus Clausus” Law, there is no parity between the terms of inscription in Hungarian universitities and those which obtain in foreign universities.

The development of the situation in regard to the Jews of Roumania, the report said, has pursued a course in harmony with the pledges of the Roumanian Government and the suggestions submitted to it by the Joint Foreign Committee in January. Symptoms of anti-Semitic unrest have not been wanting, but the Government has acted with energy and promptitude, and the peace has been well maintained. This has notably been the case with the universities, where attempts to renew attacks on the Jewish students have been sternly repressed. All public meetings of anti-Semitic students have been prohibited, and the police have been instructed to arrest all persons attempting to prevent Jewish students from pursuing their studies. The Government has also made some progress in the promotion of reconstructive legislation calculated to deal with the more deeply-rooted grievances of the Jews.

Owing to the severe political crisis through which the country is now passing, the situation is, however, not without anxiety. The committee has received a further letter from the Roumanian Government giving details of the measures taken for the restoration of peace, and stating that every endeavor is being made to meet the wishes of the Jewish population.