192 EMPLOYMENT OF THE PLEBISCITE [490 



of the shortest step forward will not lend his ear and his arm to 

 chimerical proposals.^^ 



What then is the " milieu of the age " to-day ? Or, rather, 

 what was the " milieu of the age " when the representatives 

 of the Allied and Associated Powers met in conference at 

 Paris in 1918 to frame the treaties of peace? Was it not 

 the almost universally expressed tendency towards recog- 

 nition for the principle of self-determination of nationalities 

 and races? Had not practically all the members of the 

 family of nations pledged themselves to the acceptance of 

 the principle? 



The Treaty of Versailles provides for a number of ter- 

 ritorial cessions by Germany to her neighboring states, all 

 entailing the loss of German nationality. Some of these 

 cessions are demanded on the principle of national self-de- 

 termination and plebiscites in some form or other are stipu- 

 lated ; some are outright cessions without the consultation 

 of the populations thus transferred. In the case of the ces- 

 sions of this last type we must again distinguish between 

 a first class where the Allied and Associated Powers assume 

 and assert the indisputable non-German character of the 

 population transferred, and a second class where the same 

 Powers frankly admit the German contention that the ter- 

 ritories thus to be ceded are purely or largely German in 

 language and racial characteristics. The first class may 

 still be assigned to the category of territorial changes ef- 

 fected on the principle of national consent. This can, how- 

 ever, not be said of the second class. Neutral Moresnet is 

 ceded to Belgium without special justification. Prussian 

 Moresnet goes to Belgium " in partial compensation for the 

 destruction of Belgian forests," that is, on economic and 

 reparatory grounds. Western Prussia must be ceded to 

 Poland in order that the Allies be enabled to keep their war 

 pledge guaranteeing the reestablishment of Poland. We 

 have here the coincidence of historical reasons and of 



^^ Oppenheim, The Science of International Law : Its Tasks and 

 Method, in The American Journal of International Law, April, 1908, 

 PP- 314, 318. 



