(24) Russia will organize itself in accordance with the principle of the self-determination of nations into a federation of nations. In this federation there could in the west (outside of the Poles) be the Esthonians, Letts, and Lithuanians; the Ukraine will be an autonomous part of Russia—their attempt to be entirely independent could sufficiently convince the Ukrainians that separation from Russia will turn them into slaves of the Germans.
The various small nations of the Caucasus and of other parts of Russia and Russian Asia will enjoy national autonomy in accordance with their degree of education, national consciousness and number. The Prussian part of Lithuanians (with a few Letts) will be united to Lithuania. The Roumanian part of Bessarabia will be joined to Roumania. Finland may be independent, if it reaches an agreement to that effect with Russia.[1]
(25) In the Far East of Asia political supremacy belongs to the cultural nations of the Mongolian race; Western Asia has in fact been a part of Europe and will be organized by the agreement of Russia, France, England and Italy. Russian Asia will remain united to Russia, English and French colonies will continue to be English and French; nations under European rule will be secured, in accordance with their cultural development and their number, national autonomy and participation in the government.
(26) Africa will remain substantially under the rule of England and France; Germany may receive back its western colony, Italy will agree with England and France as to the increase of the colonial domain.
(27) America (Northern, Central and Southern) will not permit Germany to establish autonomous German colonies.
(28) With regard to colonies, their administration must have regard for the needs of the native peoples and educate them and extend to them self-government gradually.
(29) The German colonies in Polynesia will be given to England and Holland.
(30) The Jews among all nations will enjoy the same rights as other citizens; their national and Zionistic aims will receive after the example of England all possible support.
(31) The Congress will adopt a law with international guarantees securing to national minorities cultural and administrative self-government.
(32) Ethnographic rectifications of state boundaries may, with the consent of the nations concerned, be carried out from time to time according to the growth of national consciousness and experience. The Congress must urge an exact census of the population according to nationality, for the existing statistics are very partial and insufficient.
(33) The Congress should provide leading principles for eugenic supervision, secured from the point of view of hygiene, of be of great importance after war in all the states; policy in regard to population will be of great impartance after war in all the countries. Alcoholism, for instance, must be suppressed internationally.
(34) To secure the execution of the principles and decisions reached by the Congress of Peace, the Congress will transform itself into an international tribunal, controlling the cultural development of nations and the organization of international reciprocity. (League of Nations).
The leading principle of all decisions must be the endeavor to facilitate the international organization of all nations of Europe, and to bring them nearer to the nations of Asia, Africa, and America. If necessary, some closer unions of nations can be formed.
The political innovations proposed in this theme are neither many nor surprising. They are in harmony with the development of nations and their just demand of political freedom and unification. De facto only two independent states would be new, the Polish and Czecho-Slovak; Bohemia and Poland are not new states, for they had been free, their freedom will be merely restored. Bohemia is legally independent, Austria and Hungary oppressed it by force. The other states will remain, some en-
- ↑ The German professor Schaeffer in his ethnographical map (1916) gives the following statistics of non-German nations in Germany—Prussia; Poles, 3,746,000; French, 216,000; Danes, 147,000; Lithuanians, 106,000. These figures are estimated to be too low; Schaefer’s map conceals the fact that there are Lusatians and Czechs in Prussia. Some ethnographers, even Slavs, declare the Kashubs are a nation distinct from the Poles, and the Lusatians also are divided in two branches. A more detailed ethnographic exposition is here unnecessary. (There are in Prussia, just as in the Austrian Bukovina, Russian colonies, etc., but these questions are without political significance.)
