Full resolution (JPEG)
- On this page / på denna sida
- Chapter III. The Baltic Minorities' Rights detailed. Paper read at the Assembly of the International Law Association at The Hague, September 1921
- Chapter IV. Safeguarding the Rights of the Baltic Minorities. Paper presented to the Council of the Federation of the League of Nations Societies at Vienna, October 1921
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has been proofread at least once.
(diff)
(history)
Denna sida har korrekturlästs minst en gång.
(skillnad)
(historik)
their Constitution and grant certain rights to minorities. This seems
to me to be all right. But, unfortunately, the Baltic States are not the
only ones who oppress the minorities living on their territories. There
are States which are members of the League of Nations who are doing
the same, and perhaps worse, and yet the League of Nations is
powerless and cannot restrain them. I am not going to discuss what the reason
is; that is a different question. But the fact is there that at present
the League of Nations is powerless to restrain its own members from
oppressing their national minorities.“
Chapter IV.
Safeguarding the Rights of the Baltic Minorities.
Paper presented to the Council of the League of Nations Societies,
at Vienna, October 1921.
At the present time, we stand on the threshold of a new era, in
which people of different positions in life are no longer divided into
classes, and where social and ethnographical equality is considered a
necessary corollory to a free political community. Under such new
conditions, all the elements of the population, differ as they may,
racially or religiously, have equal rights before the law of a State to
which they all owe allegiance.
In applying these fundamental principles, it is, above all, necessary
that patriotism — love of a common homeland — should take the
place of short-sighted and intolerant nationalism. A nation is but an
international political entity. We speak of the American, the Swiss,
the Belgian nations, and others, although these nations consist of very
different racial elements, and in the cases enumerated, have not even
a particular language of their own. In every State there are racial
majorities and minorities which together form a political conception
of the nation. These combine in a common national ideal which
prevents them from drifting apart. At the present time, throughout the
civilised world, „Democracy“ is blazing forth in flaming letters all over
the political horizon — a principle which, if it conveys any meaning
at all — embodies the postulates of liberty, equality and fraternity.
But how can these tenets be carried into practice if the majority make
a point of subjugating the minority, setting at nought their rights as
human beings and continually stirring up strife?
The rights of minorities in their essence represent the Magna
Charta of humanity. They comprise principles, which civilised humanity
of the twentieth century has proclaimed to be the irreducible heirloom
of each single individual and every body of man. They are the rights
of civilised man. Accordingly, the Treaty of Versailles and the
supplementary Conventions with the new States do not limit themselves in
establishing the privileges of religious freedom and equality, which
were already provided for in the Treaty of Osnabruck 1648, in the
Protocol of the four Allied Powers, Great Britain, Russia, Prussia and
Austria — when the re-union of Belgium and Holland (1814) was
recognised, at the Congress of Vienna (1815), likewise at the London
Conference for the independence of Greece (1830), and again, at the
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Project Runeberg, Sun Dec 10 17:01:37 2023
(aronsson)
(diff)
(history)
(download)
<< Previous
Next >>
https://runeberg.org/minlatest/0030.html
