POLAND AND LEAGUE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 248, 17 September 1934, Page 7

POLAND AND LEAGUE.

REPLIES TO STATEMENT. OBLIGATIONS EMPHASISED. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Sept. 14. Speaking in the League of Nations Assembly at Geneva following the announcement that Poland refuses any longer to co-operate with international organisations, which are taken to include the organs of the League of Nations, in the matter of supervision over the application by Poland of a system of minority protection, Sir John Simon (British Foreign Secretary) said that the country he represented, together with some other parties, was a signatory of the Polish Minority Treaty in which Poland accepted the guarantee of the League for the protection of national minorities. The terms of Article 93 of the Versailles Treaty could not be overlooked. Poland had further accepted a procedure as to the manner in which the guarantee was to be exercised. Those resolutions became binding on Poland by reason of her acceptance. No country could possibly release herself from obligations by unilateral action.

Sir John, after remarking that the effect of the statement might have been misunderstood, examined it in more detail. Referring to the proposal for making universal the international protection of minorities and the particular position of certain States bound by minority treaties, be pointed out that these two matters were entirely distinct. Regarding the former, a Polish draft resolution on the subject was already before the Assembly’s political commission.

The Daily Telegraph says that the demand that the minorities question should be dealt with on a uniform basis for all alike has a very reasonable sound, but the fact is that when the Allied Powers in 1919 set about creating the new Poland there was no way of doing so without including large numbers of Russians, Ukrainians, Germans and millions of Jews. The Poles themselves had for generation suffered so severly that the Allied Powers felt constrained to make certain stipulations. These were that the new Poland should not prosecute a policy of assimilation by means of political persecution and should allow minorities freedom of conscience, language, and faith. Poland and the Succession States, which have received territories containing large minorities, agreed to their being placed under the guarantee of the League.