New Enlightenment

Only a few months ago, King Carol II picked a Premier, the late Octavian Goga, who was one of the most arrant reactionaries, Jew-baiters and oppressors of minority peoples in all Europe (TIME, Jan. 10). Last week the present Premier,

Patriarch Miron Cristea, who is well under the King's thumb, suddenly issued what is for Rumania an enlightened Minorities Statute. Between sunup and sundown one day it gave a new status to 1,568,000 Magyars, 900,000 Jews, 790,000 Russians, 792,000 Germans, 400,000 Slavs, 290,000 Bulgars and 170,000 Turks, who together with smaller groups make up nearly one-third of Carol II's subjects.

It appeared that the King, virtually a dictator, had acted forehandedly to keep Rumania from later becoming the butt of demands like those now being made in Czechoslovakia by the Sudeten Germans. Although Rumania's fine new Minorities Statute spelled definite progress, it was also an admission of the servile status in which for 20 years Rumanian minorities have been kept. They are now granted elementary civic rights. For the first time they can be elected without racial disqualification to State and civic jobs. The State will lend its support to public schools where teaching is in the minorities' tongues. Most priceless boon: Moslems, Jews, Unitarians, etc. may now enjoy full religious liberty in Rumania.

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