‘times’ Urges Intervention by League in Roumania and Hungary for Minorities

Comments on American Committee’s Report on Anti-Jewish Excesses

It is the duty of the League of Nations, as the legal and moral guardian of the national minorities in Europe, to take steps to prevent the further commission of injustice and discrimination against the minorities in Roumania and Hungary, is the demand voiced editorially by the “New York Times” commenting on the report of the American Committee on Religious Minorities. The paper writes:

“A depressing picture of injustice and folly emerges from the preliminary report submitted to the American Committee on the Rights of Religious Minorities by its investigating deputation in Roumana. In that country Jews, Baptists, Lutherans and Roman Catholics are the victims of an excited nationalism, directly stimulated or connived at by a majority of the old ruling class. The minority rights stipulated in the peace treaties by which the new Roumania came into being are inscribed in the Constitution but are largely violated in practice. Patriotic “defense” organizations, animated by religious or racial hatred, are spactioned by the Government. The old pre-war policies of Russification against many subject races of the Czars, of Germanification against the Polcs, are now in force, and with a ruthlessness of procedure that the old methods did not always attain. In the universities, in the schools and courts of law, in various fields of administration, the investigators found a state of inequity which moves it to speak out with a vigor that refuses to take account of international ‘etiquette.’

“Roumania is not the only guilty party in Central and Eastern Europe. There is tragic irony in Jew-baiting campaigns in Hungary, followed by Hungarian protests against anti-Hungarian riots in Roumania. But the case of Roumania is the worse of the two. Roumania cannot plead the sense of defeat and humiliation which may be responsible for Magyar pogroms. Roumania came out of the war enormously augmented in area and population. Her duty, even her self-interest, is to consolidate what she has won. But the poorest conceivable way of cementing a new nation together is by intimidation and the denial of legal and moral rights. As the deputation points out, the new nations in Europe need all the talents and loyalties they can muster to deal with their new problems. Instead, they are engaged in rebuffing talent and fomenting embitterment. The forces which wrecked two great empires and helped to defeat a third are again in play.

“Ultimately, it is for the League of Nations to speak out if the peace of the Continent and the well-being of the nationalities themselves are not to be undermined. The League has the legal right under the treaties. It has the moral right as guardian of peace in Europe. And for the Powers in the League. there is the additional right of self-defense. They cannot tolerate local hatreds which may lead to general conflict. If there is now in existence a Greater Roumania, it is because of the sacrifices of the English and French nations.”