In 1922, a Lithuanian delegate to the League of Nations suggested to the
General Assembly that the League should adopt universal standards of Minority
Protection in Europe. He insisted that all League members should be required to
respect the same standards of minority rights being imposed on Eastern Europe's
new nation-states at the end of World War I. His proposal was quickly mocked and
dismissed by the Great Powers. Representing France, Henry de Jouvenel replied,
"France has not signed any Minorities Treaty because she has no minorities. To find
minorities in France, they would have to be created in the imagination." When a
Romanian delegate, referring to an ethnographic map, suggested that the linguistic
and ethnic minorities dotting Western Europe were not a figment of his imagination,
a League expert bluntly replied, "Minorities only exist where there is a treaty
