midst they reside. And to the credit of the Poles, Rumanians, and Russians, who were to be constrained to remove all the existing disabilities, they enfranchised the Hebrew elements spontaneously. But the western Jews who championed their eastern brothers, proceeded to demand a further concession which many of their own co-religionists hastened to disclaim as dangerous—a kind of autonomy which Roumanian, Polish and Russian statesmen, as well as many of their Jewish fellow-subjects, regarded as tantamount to the creation of a state within a state.” (Page 13.)
The treaties imposed by the Allies upon Poland, Rumania, Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia and Greece granted all, or nearly all the demands of the Jews contained in the above “Bill of Rights,” while Austria and Hungary gave pledges in their treaties with the Allied and Associated Powers, that they would protect “minority rights” in the same general way defined in the treaties with the other five powers.
These treaties, as Mr. Dillon correctly points out, go much further than to guarantee to the Jews residing in these several countries full political equality with other citizens, and freedom from persecution or discrimination on account of race or religion. Not only did the treaties contain such guarantees,—which, Mr. Dillon states, the small powers in question were quite willing to give,—but they contained a principle new to international law, viz. that a racial minority should be treated in various relations as a separate entity within the State, with separate rights of its own, which it is permitted to enforce against the national government. An illustration of this new principle is found in certain articles of the treaty with Poland relating to educational matters. By these articles the Polish State is actually compelled to permit the Jews, in towns and districts where they constitute