Rumania and Her Minorities The new Nationalities Statute issued by
the Rumanian Government last week is as enlightened as it was unexpected. It is a legacy from the short-lived Goga Government, which disappeared last September, but the details of it must be put to the credit of the present administration. The statute affirms the right of every Rumanian citizen, without distinction of language, race or religion, to maintain its own schools (for which it may claim financial contributions from the Government), to use its own language, to observe its own religion and worship in its own way. The question of a child's nationality is to be decided by its parents alone. The new regulations will bring peculiar relief to the Jews and Hungarians, of whom there are about a million each ; it may at the same time remove obstacles to the Nazification of the German-speaking population, which is reckoned at about 600,000. All these minorities are, of course, incon- siderable compared with the total population of Rumania, which is over 19,000,000. The new measures should do much to improve relations between Rumania, and perhaps the Little Entente as a whole, and Hungary. Welcome as the Nationalities Statute is, it is true of minority questions more than any other that the important factor is not the letter of the law but its administration.
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