Asks Justice For Jews In Romania.

New York Times 100 years ago today, June 22, 1913:
M. Clémenceau Says Balkan Nation Has Cheated Semite People of Their Rights.
IGNORED BERLIN PROMISE
Loyal Jews of Rumania Are Treated as Foreigners and Have No Country.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    PARIS, June 21.— Ex-Premier Clémenceau has just published a stirring article on the condition of the Rumanian Jews, "the last serfs still existing in Europe," as they were recently called by an Italian writer.
    Although, he says, they have now escaped from Turkish bondage, racial prejudice is so strong in the Balkans that the advantage of not being regularly slaughtered in the future is the principal benefit they reap from the change, which in every way is a change of masters only.
    Among Rumanians, whose high sense of civilization in other respects cannot be doubted, says M. Clémenceau, the anti-Semitic feeling has now reached the last degree of intensity. The country has cheated her Jewish population out of the civil and political emancipation, which she promised the great powers at the Berlin Congress of 1870 to give them as the price of her establishment as an independent nation.
    One clause in the Treaty of Berlin, the writer recalls, expressly states that in Rumania differences in religion shall not be a reason for exclusion from civil and political rights, public employments, and posts of honor. To this clause Rumania subscribed only after the rest of Europe had absolutely insisted upon it.
    For eight years nothing of a practical nature was done to keep the promise to the powers, and in 1879 a new law was passed permitting foreigners — meaning, of course, Jews, thousands of families of whom had been in Rumania for centuries — to become naturalized by a special act of Parliament in each case.
    At length, after urgent complaints of the powers, the clause in the Berlin Treaty was made a law and Rumania became a separate kingdom.
    "Nevertheless." says M. Clémenceau, "in the last forty years less than 200 Jews have been admitted to citizenship. They are to-day foreigners in the country in which they were born — foreigners, although their establishment in the principalities of the Danube is proved by the records of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and despite the fact that they share all the public burdens, including the heaviest of all, military service.
    "They are foreigners, although they belong to no other nation and can claim no protection from any other power, thus forming an international monstrosity by having no country.
    "The Jewish Rumanian soldier who shed his blood on the field of battle is not allowed to enter a work shop, because he is a foreigner. His children are not admitted to school, because they are also foreigners."
    Only the Jews of Dobroudja, annexed by Rumania in 1878, and of Silistria, recently ceded by Bulgaria, are citizens in consequence of a special treaty.
    "This," continues M. Clémenceau, "is despite the fact that the Israelite inhabitants of Rumania have always shown themselves perfectly loyal, and the development of the country's resources is largely due to their efforts."
    The writer concludes by saying that he has the original text of the laws bringing about this monstrous state of affairs, and will publish them if any denial of his statements appears in the press.