The Minorities' Dilemma
National States and National Minorities. By C. A. Maeartney. (Oxford University Press. 18s.)
ONE of the most responsible duties cast upon the Council of the League of Nations in 1919 was the protection of "racial; religious or linguistic" minorities in certain States in Central and Eastern Europe. Admittedly the task was necessary. Yet it was inherently self-contradictory, for in a constitutionally governed State the idea of a group of citizens in Permanent need of special protection is abhorrent. Scotsmen need no special protection in Great Britain ; and, if ever they did, the last means they would think of using in order to secure it would be intervention by the League of Nations. Why then should the League be authorized to intervene in the internal affairs of certain of its members ? And, granting the principle of such intervention, why should it not be undertaken in the name of civil liberty and decent government in general rather than on behalf of particular social groups ? ;Surely this -Would be at once more logical and less invidious. Seemingly also it would be more practical : for to intervene on behalf of a section of a foreign State's population throws upon you the responsibility of defining what that section is and that is clearly no easy matter. What is the definition of a Siotsnian ?
Innumerable books and pamphlets have been written on the so-called "problem of minorities" in recent years but. even when they have not been pleading some special cause, they have mostly evaded the fundamental issue. Here at -last is -a book in- which it isfrankly set out and analysed to the roots. Thoge roots, of course, are historical. Mr. Macartney has succeeded in producing what will undoubtedly 'take rank as the standard: work on this subject, because he has been able to approach it with a wide knowledge of the history of Eastern Europe and of the political ideas which have partly resulted from it and partly helped to mould it.
Broadly, his thesis is that there is a far-reaching difference in political theory 'between Western and Eastern Europe. In Western Europe, where the population has been fixed since the early. Middle Ages, homogeneous citizen bodies have long since come into existence. Thus when the citizens of France clamoured for more rights, all that they needed to do was to take over the sovereignty of the old absolute monarch mild become a "sovereign nation." This was the theory of Rousseau, as applied both in Western Europe and in the- United States.
But in Europe East of the Rhine, from Germany to Turkey,
--rea-saris--Nyhieh -Mtittirtney -analyses with great skill, a wholly different situation prevailed, which led_to_what he.calls a - " personal " rather than a " political " conception- of tiationality. Populations were, and still are, neither homogen- eOus nor fixed, and constitutional development, as we under- tand it in the West, has been retarded. What then does it mean to be a German, a Pole, a Magyar, a Bulgarian ? brim prophet of nationality in this region has been not Rousseau but Herder, and for Herder the nation was aa 'enlarged family, a natural unit bound by the tie of blood. When this enlarged family felt the impact of the ideas of he French Revolution, it coined the slogan of " self-deter- imination." But "self-determination," as Mr. Macartney i.. points out, "is a political conception." The will to form 'part of a political State can (as in the case of Scotsmen) ;4', be entirely independent of considerations of personal nationality." To claim therefore that every nation must
'form an independent State is to substitute for true self- , , determination a very different thing, "which (he neatly , ..
says) should rather be called national determinism."
Thus the real trouble in Central and Eastern Europe is due to a• confusion of thought resulting from an attempt to - apply Western political ideas in an environment for which they were not fitted. The supreme example of this con- fusion is, of course, the theory of the State now officially adopted in Germany. To this Mr. Macartney devotes a few stinging pages as a pendant to a suggestive chapter, entitled `.`, The Un-National State," dealing with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom.
• .( Space does not allow comment ort_the central portion of the book, which deals in admirably careful detail with the League system for the protection of minorities and with the ..,
various suggestions made for its improvement. Frankly admitting that "a national State and national minorities are incompatibles," and that satisfactory conditions cannot be looked for till there has been a change in political thinking, Air. Macartney justifies the intervention of the League for the sake of the maintenance of peace. Minority protection cannot undo the work of history or hasten the movement of thought, but it can put a check to intolerable conditions
duch as have led to war-in this region in the past and might i easily do so again. But such intervention can, of course, i
only be effeetve if the Protecting Powers themselves afford tile example of constitutional order and civil liberty.
ALFRED ZUNIKERN.
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