The failure of the application for a general declaration in respect to freedom of religion was doubtless due to the sensitiveness of the British colonies and, indeed, of the United States, toward the attempt of Japan to obtain a declaration in favor of social equality and against racial discrimination in any state of the League. The American representatives probably felt that such a declaration, however neutral in its effect in this country because our Constitution secures the equal protection of the law to all, would be successfully used to defeat the ratification of the League Covenant as part of the treaty. They were therefore obliged to sacrifice the clause securing religious tolerance.

But there still remains an opportunity to achieve every useful and practical end in regard to religious freedom. There exists no danger of pogroms and oppressive laws against the Jews in the United States or Britain or France or Italy. It exists only in certain states like Poland, Rumania, the Ukraine and possibly in the Czecho-Slav and Jugo-Slav countries. Of these, Rumania is the chief offender. Poland, under Paderewski, also shows obduracy in the matter. All these states are, so to speak, children of the League; they may well be required, as a condition of their national independence and the protection they are to enjoy from the League, to give pledges against racial and religious discrimination in their laws and in favor of complete religious freedom. Means should be retained by the League to enforce the pledges.

Pledges were required by the Congress of Berlin in 1879 from Bulgaria, Servia and Rumania that their fundamental laws would put Jews on an equality with all other citizens and protect them in the exercise of their religion. Bulgaria and Servia faithfully complied, but Rumania deliberately

and dishonestly evaded, and dishonored, her solemn obligation. If now she is to receive Transylvania from Hungary by decree of the League, she may well be put under effective bond to give to her Jewish people that freedom and justice which she has faithlessly denied to them for forty years. Poland, too, which was long the only refuge for the oppressed and unhappy children of Israel, should be made, as the price of her restoration to nationality, to issue a new charter of religious liberty and civic equality to her Jewish citizens.

The Jews are not the only denomination who need protection. There are Unitarians and others who, in some of these new states, have suffered for their faith. It will be an important accomplishment if the League uses its power to remove this last vestige of medievalism.

SECRET TREATY PROVISIONS THAT ARE AT THE ROOT OF THE CRISIS AT THE PARIS CONFERENCE1

ITALIAN CLAIMS TO FIUME WOULD, IF GRANTED, SOW THE SEEDS OF TROUBLE AND DISCONTENT AMONG THE

JUGO-SLAVS

The peace treaty with Austria-Hungary is delayed by the controversy over the disposition of the port of Fiume, near the head of the Adriatic. When the war broke out in 1914 the Entente Allies and Germany wooed Italy intensively to induce her to join their respective sides. The obligations of the Triple Alliance had not been made public, but it was 1 Article in Public Ledger, Apr. 25, 1919.

understood that Italy was bound to lend her aid to Austria and Germany in case of a defensive war. Italy positively insisted that this was not such a war, and so maintained her neutrality for a time. Then she was induced by promises of the Entente Allies (Great Britain, France and Russia) to declare war on Austria and subsequently on Germany. Her course was criticized as one wholly influenced by greed of territory. The treaty by which she became an ally of France and Great Britain was secret, but enough was known to enable Italy's critics to aver that it was the consummation of a successful bid. Italy's defenders met these attacks by showing that she was entitled under the treaty of the Triple Alliance to be consulted before Austria attacked Serbia, and by revealing the bad faith of Germany and Austria in Italy's war with Turkey and their secret aid to the Sultan. This aroused sympathy with Italy, and it was assumed that the heart cry of the Irredentists for a restoration of Italy's territory everywhere had been satisfied by an agreement that Trentino and Trieste should become hers.

It now appears that the Dalmatian coast was also included in territory promised to Italy. As to Fiume, Italians perhaps form a majority of the inhabitants, but it is, and has been for years, a Croatian city. It is, and has been always, the port by which the solidly Slav population in the country behind the city reach the sea.

Italy seeks to push the principle of self-determination too far. The unit of population in which the majority is to determine the nation's control should include the back country with which the port is united.

Unless some explanation is given, Italy's insistence will tend to revive the charge that greed was her chief motive

in this war. Our entrance into the war was accompanied by a declaration in favor of only just restitution of territory and upon the assumption, often stated, that it was not a war of conquest by the Allies. The terms of the armistice followed these lines.

If the facts are correctly stated, the public opinion of the United States and the disinterested world will sustain the President in resisting Italy's determination to take over Fiume and close Croatian access to the sea. The question is one of Italian politics. Italy has taken possession of Fiume with the strong hand of conqueror against the Croatians. Orlando may lose power in the Italian Parliament if he fails to stand by the Italian claim. Sonnino, his colleague at the conference and his associate as premier, is rigid and uncompromising. He would probably resist Orlando if the latter yielded. The situation is therefore acute. But can Italy afford to break, on such an issue, with the conference? One would think not. The President would seem to be clearly right in maintaining that at least Fiume be made a free port for Croatia as Danzig is to be for Poland. If Italy's wish were to prevail, the settlement, with palpable injustice in it, would create a sense of wrong among the Jugo-Slavs that would return to plague Italy when most inconvenient.

ANALYSIS OF THE LEAGUE COVENANT
AS AMENDED 1

The amendments to the Covenant of the League of Nations adopted in Paris on Monday will bear careful study,

1 Article in Public Ledger Apr. 30, 1919.

and perhaps it is unwise hastily to express a confident opinion. But several readings suggest the following com

ment :

In the first place, the language and arrangement of the articles have been greatly improved. The use of different terms to mean the same thing, which tended to prevent an easy reading of the document, has been largely corrected. Provisions having immediate relation to one another have been assembled where they belong, avoiding application of them to subjects or countries which they were not intended to affect. Then names, misleading or clumsy, have been changed. The Executive Council, which was and is not executive but advisory, has become the Council. The Body of Delegates has become the Assembly, a much more suitable term.

Second, rules of construction that ought to have obtained in interpreting the original Covenant are now made express and relieve the real doubts of friends and supporters of the League. The most important of these, perhaps, is the privilege specifically reserved to any member of the League to withdraw from it after two years' notice and after a compliance with its obligation under international law and under the League Covenant incurred before withdrawal. This gives any nation an opportunity to test the operation of the League and its usefulness and to avoid undue and unreasonable danger or burden in the future which actual trial may develop. Moreover, taken with the power of amendment which can be effected by a unanimous vote of the nine countries whose representatives compose the Council and by a majority of the members of the League, there is ample opportunity for such a country as the United States to secure a revision of the Covenant and a reëxami