Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter II. The Baltic Minorities' Rights. Their relation to Municipal and International Law. Lecture delivered at the Grotius Society in London, November 1921
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religion and ethics be subject to grave changes, the natural conditions
of human existence will always be the same, as long as human life
shall run. The procreation of humanity rests on the maintenance of
the family, which, together with other families related to each other,
form an ethnographic unity, aggrandised by the coalescence of racial
elements of the same origin, forming the tribe, the population of a
given district, and finally, the nation. The natural course, of national
revolution has, in the past, often been diverted aside by conquerors in
their lust for power, but, in spite of Imperialism, racial affinity
vindicates its natural birth-right as the chief, constructive principle and
mainstay of the State. Nowadays, all races claim the right of existence
by themselves and for themselves, and this right has been acknowledged
by the common conscience of man.
Self-determination has also been butressed by a limitation of the
sovereignity of the State. In early times, the individual was supposed
to be neither more nor less than a mere particle of the community, as
exemplified by the inexorable discipline enforced by the Spartan State.
But the old idea of the State as the supreme arbiter of right or wrong,
the one and only creator of public and private law, could not be
maintained in the face of the requirements of an International community
and the rights of the single individual. Intervention or non-intervention,
— no civilised State can any longer consider itself an entirely
self-contained, and consequently, independent entity. Even between
States, which only yesterday were at enemity with each other, there
exists a community of interests, which if ignored, brings about a
displacement of the economic balance of the world. While unemployment
occasions to the Allies and the United States losses which are
much greater than any reparations which could be wrung from Germany,
the Germans, owing to the increase in the cost of raw products from
abroad, the fabulous rise in the price of commodities — as a direct
result from the depreciation of the German currency — are also no
better off. There is something wrong in the state of the world, since
the economic and financial solidarity of the nations have been so put
out of gear by chauvinism and international hatred. The tragedy of
the world war, as affecting the whole organism of civilised mankind,
has made it clear to the vanquished as well as to the victors, that both
are parts of one and the same world-wide economic, financial and
political Commonwealth, just as disease afflicting one member of the human
body necessarily affects the whole system.
No State is any longer permitted to disregard the main ethical
principles on which the civilised world is based and which are anchored in
the moral conscience of mankind. For instance, no nation is at liberty
to introduce slavery, wholesale slaugther of innocent beings, robbery,
immorality, and so forth. The ten commandments have a supernational
authority. This is the reason that the Russian Soviet Republic is
still not considered as a legitimate power, although it has succeeded in
holding its own, simply because it stands outside the pale of civilisation
in its practise of rapine, murder, intimidation and bad faith. Any State
which adopts similar methods, in toto or in part, endangers its position
as member of the civilised Commonwealth.
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