To this line of reasoning M. Bratiano made answer that all the helpful maxims of good government are of universal application, and, therefore, if this protection of minorities were, indeed, indispensable or desirable, it should not be restricted to the countries of eastern Europe, but should be extended to all without exception.  For it is inadmissible that two categories of states should be artificially created, one endowed with full sovereignty and the other with half-sovereignty.  Such an arrangement would destroy the equality which should lie at the base of a genuine League of Nations.

But the Powers had made up their minds, and the special treaties were imposed on the unwilling governments.  Thereupon the Rumanian Premier withdrew from the Conference, and neither his Cabinet nor that of the Jugoslavs signed the treaty with Austria at St.-Germain.

What happened after that is a matter of history.

Few politicians are conscious of the magnitude of the issue concealed by the involved diplomatic phraseology of the obnoxious treaties, or of the dangers to which their enactment will expose the minorities which they were framed to protect, the countries whose hospitality those minorities enjoy, and possibly other lands, which for the time being are seemingly immune from all such perilous race problems.  The calculable, to say nothing of the unascertained, elements of the question might well cause responsible statesmen to be satisfied with the feasible.  The Jewish elements in Europe, for centuries abominably oppressed, were justified in utilizing to the fullest the opportunity presented by the resettlement of the world in order to secure equality of treatment.  And it must be admitted that their organization is marvelous.  For years I championed their cause in Russia, and paid the penalty under the governments of Alexander II and III.[365] The sympathy of every unbiased man, to whatever race or religion he may belong, will naturally go out to a race or a nation which is trodden underfoot, as were the ill-starred Jews of Russia ever since the partition of Poland.  But equality one would have thought sufficient to meet the grievance.  Full equality without reservation.  That was the view taken by numerous Jews in Poland and Rumania, several of whom called on me in Paris and urged me to give public utterance to their hopes that the Conference would rest satisfied with equality and to their fear of the consequences of an attempt to establish a privileged status.  Why this position should exist only in eastern Europe and not elsewhere, why it should not be extended to other races with larger minorities in other countries, are questions to which a satisfactory response could be given only by farther-reaching and fateful changes in the legislation of the world.