It was adorned with a
large portrait of "Benoit XV.," looking grave and discouraging over his
spectacles, and the headlines insisted it was "_La Pensee du Pape._"
Cross-heads sufficiently indicated the general tone. One read:
_"Le Saint Siege impartial... Au-dessus de la bataille...."_ The good
Cardinal would have made a good lawyer. He had as little to say about
God and the general righteousness of things as the Bishop of London. But
he got in some smug reminders of the severance of diplomatic relations
with the Vatican. Perhaps now France will be wiser. He pointed out
that the Holy See in its Consistorial Allocution of January 22nd, 1915,
invited the belligerents to observe the rules of war. Could anything
more be done than that? Oh!--in the general issue of the war, if you
want a judgement on the war as a whole, how is it possible that the
Vatican to decide? Surely the French know that excellent principle of
justice, _Audiatur et altera pars_, and how under existing circumstances
can the Vatican do that...? The Vatican is cut off from communication
with Austria and Germany. The Vatican has been deprived of its temporal
power and local independence (another neat point)....
So France is bowed out. When peace is restored, the Vatican will perhaps
be able to enquire if there was a big German army in 1914, if German
diplomacy was aggressive from 1875 onward, if Belgium was invaded
unrighteously, if (Catholic) Austria forced the pace upon (non-Catholic)
Russia.
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