THE POPE'S PEACE NOTE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17163, 16 November 1917, Page 2

THE POPE'S PEACE NOTE

Br the Rev. James M. Liston. As Pope Benedict's Peace Noto h;is been so widely discussed, I should bo grateful for space- in your estoemed columns to point out its real character and value Perhaps this can best be done by answering two questions: (1) What object did thu Popo have in sending out this Noto to the heads of all the belligerent peoples? and (2) Does the- document "bear plain and largo tho marks o£ German inspiration"? (London Times, August 15, 1917). The first question is: What object did tho Pope have in sending out this Note? To eommenco with, tho Popo does not come forward as an arbitrator with definite terms of peace; no one has aslkod him ,to tuko up that position, and his practical proposals are really not "peace proposals," but proposals which seem as though they ought to bo tho basis of "a just and lasting peace." In tho second place, does not touch the question of tho origin of the war, or tho vital interests at stake, and he deliberately avoids tho enumeration and tho direct condemnation of tho wrongs done by any of the belligerents. All theso points will be discussed in due season, but there ia a timo for everything, a time for silence as well as for speech. Emphatically it is a timo for a peacemaker to be silent in regard to exasperating points of difference when he is trying to reconcile the two parties of a quarrel. And that is exactly what the Pope is attempting to do—to clear tho road towards a "just and lasting peaco." How could he possibly advance along that road if ho first proclaimed from his high position that Germany and Austria were the wrongdoers, and demanded from them a confession to that effect? To act thus would only mako tho position a hundred times worse. Men, and much more, nations, hi tho heat of a fierce struggle are not over-anxious to sit down calmly upon the stool of repentance. A working knowledge of human nature tells us that much, and so thero is nothing elso for a sensible man like the Pope to do but,_ leaving the past alcno for the present, waiving for tho moment questions of guilt and atrocities, ask the Powers concerned to look at the present horrors and the future of civilisation, and see what they can do in order to save Europe from barbarism. But surely, it will bo objected, this is trifling with principle;—have wo not been taught, "Let justice be done, even if the heavens fall?" There is no trifling with principle. Popes are not in the habit of doing that, and have more than once, for the sake of principle, withstood powerful sovereigns and allowed wholo nations to leave the church. It is simply asking the wronged to sacrifice, for the sake of peace, their right to punish the wrongdoer and exact indemnities from him. That is the sacrifice < which the Pope earnestly asks tho nations which feel themselves wronged to make for the good of the human race. I can quite understand a nation thinking that it would be unsafe or unwise to make such a sacrifice in favour of Germany, and demanding that- the guilt should bo sheeted home and full reparation made. But it is imperative for those who. take this view to recognise that it means a fight to a finish, the piling up of indescribable misery upon men, women, . and children. The taaders who urge that there can be no compromising with the guilty, must carefully weigh the fearful responsibility they assume before God for the lives and happiness of thoir subjects. That, solemn warning the Pope feels it his duty to give in the plainest of plain terms.

This then, I submit, is the true motive of the Papal Peace Note. The horrors, the almost unth.nkable butcheries and atrocities of the war, have appalled the Pope, as they have staggered all of us. Tho sacrifice of rich young lives that would have meant so much to the future of the world, the racking- anguish of stricken parents, have torn his heart as well as ours. Is there to be no end to this devil-inspired conflict? Is it not possible, the Pope asks, "to bring the peoples and their heads to more moderate counsels and to the serene deliberation of a peace—a peace just and lasting"? How many of us have found ourselves at times thinking of the same just and' lasting peace? Ho, at any rate, will try "to point out the path along which a peace, stable and honourable for all, may be attained." That brave effort, whatever comes of it, history will surely record to his credit, even as the foremost statesman of the Allies has done to-day. "Every heart that has not been blinded and hardened by this terrible war," wrote President Wilson in his reply, "must be touched by this moving appeal of his Holiness the Pope; must feel the dignity and force of the generous motives which prompted it, and! must fervently wish that we might take the path, of peace he so persuasively points out." To turn now to the second question. The Times asserts that the Papal Note "bears plain and large the marks of German inspiration." Is that really so? Tho following considerations will throw light on the question. (a) There is no particular reason why it should be inspired by Germany and Austria rather than by the Allies. The Catholic Church has large numbers on both sides, and, indeed, if the Pope thought only of power, as his critics hold, would he not at once plump for the Allies, for they have some 120 millions of Catholics to the 60 millions of the Central Powers?

(b) Austria, it is often said, is a great Catholic power which the Pope would not care to see beaten, much less crushed. The Pope, doubtless like every other real statesman, is not anxious to see any nation mtshedi; he would wish every people to keep its place in the sun and work out its heaven-given destiny. All the same, the head of a church that has been in the world some 1900 years, that has seen a hhndred—or shall wo say, a thousand?— kingdoms rise to power and then fall, that has in the course of her history lost whole nations from her unity of faith and government and still lives on in undiminished. greatness—the head of such a church is not likely to fear it will fall to pieces. i£ one power such as Austria is broken up politically. 'Indeed, at the present moment our foremost man of letters in England, Dγ William Barry, who would cheerfully walk to death for a Pope's wish, is loudly advocating the breaking up Catholic Austria! (Nineteenth Century, September). (c) If the Peace ,Noto is inspired by Germany, it is a curious thing that _ when it refers to the cruelties of the war, it should mention only those acts which the Germans alone have perpetrated—viz., the raiding and bombing of open towns: "Even upon defenceless cities, quiet villages, and their innocent inhabitants, desolation .and death were seen to fall." Equally curious is it that if the Pope is so favourably inclined towards Germany he should, on the only occasion on which he has pronounced on the guilt of the combatants, have expressly condemned not the Allies, but • Germany! (Letter of June, 1915, to the Belgian Minister with' reference to the crime of violating Belgian neutrality.) (d) One of the suggestions in the Peace Note is that all the Powers, the Allies as well as Germany and Austria, shall calmly sit down and discuss the true ownership of territories which Germany and Austria have not seized in the present war, but have always claimed, and still claim, as part of their Empires. Does that spell German prompting?

(e) Our statesmen, orators, and newspapers are always denouncing Prussia and the Hohenzollern dynasty for their lawless worship of brute force. They insist that ever since 1870 the political and international action of Germany has been governed by an infamous principle—viz., that the strong have a perfect right to crush the weak, that law and merely.moral rights must give way to physical and material power. Be it so. I can well imagine every one of the two hundred and fifty-nine predecessors of Benedict XV—many of them put to death on the strength of this very principle—rising from their graves to denounce this inhuman philosophy of life, and I am not surprised to read in Benedict's own Peace Note: "The moral force of right must replace the material force of arms." In other words, what the Allied leaders have for the past three years been calling the principle of German kultur is now plainly condemned by the Pope. Is it fair, in face of this, to speak of his Peace Note as pro-German in bias?

The Railway Officers' Institute has passed a resolution endorsing with all emphasis tho action of' the Grand Council of State Servants in its representations to the Government with a view to reduction of the high cost of living, and d'Osiring to impress ■upon the Government and the Minister of Railways the urgent necessity of making a prompt and practical effort to reduce the price of necessary household commodities. The traanimous opinion of tho railway officers is that the difficulties attached to this problem should not be insurmountable to the Government. This 'xjuncil further resolves that, should the Govornmeiit fail to reduce the cost of commodities to a degree commensurate with the wage-earners'' decreased spending power, it will use its bost endeavours to obtain an increase in the salaries of its lower-paid members. Tho railtray officers realise that in the present conditions it is necessary for each and every one of them to accept a measure of sacrifice, but they emphatically object to bo sacrificed for the benefit of the profiteer.