CHAPTER VI 



The Plebiscite in the Peace Treaties Ending the 

 World War 



Because of the growing disaffection of the foreign ele- 

 ments in some of the countries involved in the late World 

 War, the Allied and Associated Powers found it expedient 

 to offer a settlement of the aspirations of the freedom-seek- 

 ing peoples on the basis of the principle of national self- 

 determination. Thus the historical development of the 

 plebiscite as the mode of expression of this principle of 

 self-definition would seem to have assumed a new phase. 

 Heretofore the principle of national self-determination had 

 been recognized, and the plebiscite had been employed in 

 international affairs only in individual cases and with the 

 consent of or upon pressure from the power or powers di- 

 rectly or indirectly interested in each instance as it presented 

 itself. With the embodiment of the principle of national 

 self-determination in the officially defined war aims of the 

 Allied and Associated Powers and the submission, even 

 though enforced, of the Central Powers on the basis of 

 these expressed aims, we have in the Peace Treaties the pro- 

 vision for plebiscites apparently sanctioned by all the large 

 and a great number of the smaller nations of the w^orld. 



By the Brest-Litovsk Treaty concluded and signed on 

 March 3, 1918, between Russia and the Central Powers, 

 the former consents in Article HI that " the territories lying 

 to the west of the line agreed upon by the contracting 

 parties which formerly belonged to Russia will no longer 

 be subject to Russian sovereignty, . . ." that " Russia re- 

 frains from all interference in the internal relations of these 

 territories " and that " Germany and Austria-Hungary . . . 

 determine the future status of these territories in agree- 



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