ene. All our institutions should therefore be calculated to
encourage assimilation. If we adopt the opposite policy, we inevitably
alienate the privileged from the unprivileged sections of the community,
generate enmity between them, cause endless worries to the
administration and paralyze in advance our best-intentioned endeavors to
fuse the various ethnic ingredients of the nation into a homogeneous
whole.

"This argument applies as fully to the other national fragments in our
midst as to the Jews. It is manifest, therefore, that the one certain
result of the minority clause will be to impose domestic enemies on each
of the states that submits to it, and that it can commend itself only to
those who approve the maxim, _Divide et impera_.

"It also entails the noteworthy diminution of the sovereignty of the
state. We are to be liable to be haled before a foreign tribunal
whenever one of our minorities formulates a complaint against us.[366]
How easily, nay, how wickedly such complaints were filed of late may be
inferred from the heartrending accounts of pogroms in Poland, which have
since been shown by the Allies' own confidential envoys to be utterly
fictitious. Again, with whom are we to make the obnoxious stipulations?
With the League of Nations? No. We are to bind ourselves toward the
Great Powers, who themselves have their minorities which complain in
vain of being continually coerced. Ireland, Egypt, and the negroes are
three striking examples. None of their delegates were admitted to the
Conference. If the principle which those Great Powers seek to enforce be
worth anything, it should be applied indiscriminately to all minorities,
not restricted to those of the smaller states, who already have
difficulties enough to contend against."

The trend of continental opinion was decidedly opposed to this policy of
continuous control and periodic intervention. It would be unfruitful to
quote the sharp criticisms of the status of the negroes in the United
States.[367] But it will not be amiss to cite the views of two moderate
French publicists who have ever been among the most fervent advocates of
the Allied cause. Their comments deal with one of the articles[368] of
the special Minority Treaty which Poland has had to sign. It runs thus:
"Jews shall not be compelled to perform any act which constitutes a
violation of their Sabbath, nor shall they be placed under any
disability by reason of their refusal to attend courts