STERN CENSURE IK PUPAL ALLOCUTION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 306, 28 December 1939, Page 7

STERN CENSURE IK PUPAL ALLOCUTION.

HUMANITY OUTRAGED

Acts That Call For Divine

Vengeance.

ATONEMENT MUST BE MADE.

British Official Wireless. (Received 12.30 p.m.) RUGBY, December 27. The Pope's allocution to the College of Cardinals on Christmas Eve receives considerable prominence and appreciative comment in the British Press. The "Daily Telegraph" says: "Many years have passed since there came from the Vatican so stern a censure on the rulers of States and such direct and precise declarations on international policy. The effect on world opinion will be widespread and potent. Pius XII. strove to the last to preserve the peace of Europe against Hitler's fury, and when Poland lay ravaged he declared his faith in her resurrection, and denounced the system of Hitlerism. Now his Christmas allocution opens with a condemnation of a "series of acts incompatible with iifternational law and natural law and the most elementary feelinss of humanity.' "The atrocities committed on the bloodstained soil of Poland and Finland he boldly describes as acts which call for Divine vengeance. '"The first of the Pope's five conditions for peace, with justice and honour, was that peace must assure the right to live, and the freedom of all nations, great and small, and for whatever has been destroyed there must be reparation. "Thus," says the "Daily Telegraph," "the head of the Roman Catholic Church tells his people in the Reich and others all over Europe and the world that the war must go on until atonement is made for the Fuehrer's crimes against humanity by Germany, recognition of the wrong done in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Finland, and the establishment of thfiir freedom." The "Telegraph" concludes: "There is no substantial difference between the general definition announced by the Allies of the war aims which must be won and the Pope's declaration of the conditions in which he sees the only possible basis of peace." The "Manchester Guardian" holds the same view, that the Pope's conditions for a lasting and just peace require freedom for the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Finns and Austrians, if it is their wish. The "Guardian" compares the Pope's allocution with President Roosevelt's words on his appointment of a personal representative at the Vatican, and brings out the important point of similarity which is expressed in each, namely, that the will to peace must be supported by general agreement on the method for bringing it about. The "Guardian" concludes: "If by their efforts the Pope and the President can bring earlier that security which we are forced to pursue with arms, the world will have been spared more misery than it now realises."