WAR RUMOURS AND PEACE ARBITERS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 49, 8 April 1898, Page 16

WAR RUMOURS AND PEACE ARBITERS.

HATE war," biiid ;i French wit. "It spoils conversation." The saying is characteristic of that school of light and airy Gallic wits who were gi\en to skimming gaily, like twittering swallows, over the broad surface of even the mightiest questions that can exercise the human mind. Just now conversation turns mainly on the prospects and ultimate chances of two mighty wars. Hast and West are bristling with sensational possibilities. For the United States and Spain the prospects of peace were for a moment in I lie ascendant. They apparently hung by the Tope's mediation. Hut there is undoubtedly thunder in Lhe air. The submarine wire records day by day the bustle of moving battalions, and the feverish mobilising- of rhets. The risk of a big impending struggle is by no means diminished. Nobody can surmise what to-morrow may bring. # * «.

Mack and Palikao staked their reputations — and lost them — by a slavish adherence to Jomini's old "rules of war." The laboratory and the workshop have sent tne old principles of fighting to the museums of antiquities. A new order leigns afloat and ashore. Rapid-fire and rifled longrange guns, the duel between projectile and armour, war telegraphy, the enormous masses of men thrown into modern battles, the forced abandonment of close formations, the long extent of ground armies now cover, iron-clads, fast cruisers, torpedo-boats, high explosives —all have compelled radical changes in the principles and results of modern warfare such as never entered the minds of men who fought at Gravelotte 28 years ago. The Prussian breech-loader of 18G6 produced consternation' in Europe. The French mitrailleuse of 1870 inspired one of Russell's most sickening and realistic descriptions of battle carnage — that of Rezonville. The next big war — if and when it comes — will be fought out with weapons compared with which the mitrailleuse and chassepot and needlegun of 1870 are as antiquated as the blunderbuss.

Thackeray has well said that war taxes both sexes : " it takes the blood of the men and the tears of the women." It takes their treasure too. As in the case of the FrancoGerman struggle, it also leaves a gnawing bitterness of feeling which may live on for generations. And then there are its nameless " horrors." Some of them are depicted on canvas in the Musce Wiertz at Brussels, and in black and white in William Howard Russell's correspondence and in the pages of La Debacle. " Take my word for it," said Wellington, " if you had seen but one day of war, you would pray to Almighty God that you might never see such a thing again." Military men are anxious to test the new weapons under " service conditions." Friends of humanity will pray that the occasion for gratifying the professional or scientific curiosity of the military mind may be far distant.

A ray of hope shone foi a moment out of the Press Association's message that the Pope would mediate between Spain and the United States — both, it was said, having requested and accepted his intervention. There is nothing novel in Papal arbitration. Leo XIII'k advice, said Rev. H. R. Haweis at Rome in 1894, " has been sought by distant communities throughout the Catholic world, and followed. His arbitration in Peru averted a civil war. His counsels to American strikers and Irish Home Rulers were wise and tempered. He is the friend of peace, and himself a peacemaker" (Irish Week!//, May 12, IS'.U). Germany and Spain submitted to his arbitration their quarrel over the Caroline Islands ; and both loyally abided by his decision. Only two years ago Chile and Argentina referred to him a dispute regarding the delimitation of their respective territories. His decision gave unqualified satisfaction to both republics, and the two Presidents tendered him their thanks for his intervention. "There can be no doubt as to the wish of his declining days," says the Jewish Review. "It is ' peace,' and a closer union and brotherhood for the entire human race." No partisan can be a peacemaker. And the feeble, aged prisoner of the Vatican, standing on the threshold of eternity, is no mere partisan.

The Pope is the chief representative on earth of the Prince of Peace. In his letter on the Italian demonstrations of 1890, lie said : " Our predecessors were frequently called upon to compose the most violent quarrels." Their office of peacemakers began early — when the Roman Empire had broken up ; when Europe was partitioned out among many kings and kinglets ; when, in the confusion, international law was non-existent or in a iudimentary stage. In the middle of the fifth century Attita, with his Huns, swept into Gaul, then over Northern Italy, and finally he set his face towards Home. The Vandals were in possession of Africa. The (ioths held Spain. The centre of Christian civilisation, as well as its circumference, was threatened. Pope St. Lko the Great confronted Attiia by the banks of the I'o, and the wild warriors from the north were led back again beyond the Danube. In the days of Gensehic Rome was once more saved by the intervention of the Pope. A century later the Eternal City was twice more rescued from the Lombards by Pope Gregory the Great, who, after years of patient negotiations, spread the blessings of peace over the length

and breadth of Italy in the closing year of the sixth century.

Pope St. Zachary followed the pacific traditions of his predecessors. Through h : s influence Luitprand restored the cities, spoils, and prisoners he had captured when he invaded the Roman Province in 741. In the same year he saved Ravenna from the inroads of Luitprand. A similar service was done for Central Italy by his successor, Pope Stephen 11., when Astulph, King of Lombards, swept down upon the Roman Province. A few years later, in 75G, after Astulph's death, the same Pope averted a civil war arising over the succession to the Lombard crown. During the Middle Ages, said Lord Russell of Killowen, the Popes " determined many a hot dispute between rival forces." The " Truce of God " is described by the Presbyterian historian Schaff as " one of the most benevolent institutions of the Middle Ages." It forbade all wars and feuds from Wednesday evening to Monday morning in each week, and was long enforced by the fearful penalties of excommunication and interdict.

The old and honoured peace-making function of the Popes was broken by the great religious revolution of the sixteenth century. It shows signs of reviving now. Such a universal arbiter as the Papacy is the sorest political need of the hour. To use Mr. Stead's words, the world urgently requires "in all international disputes an appeal to some authority sufficiently honest to decide the question on its merits without being ' nobbled ' by either party in the quarrel." Such an arbiter is the Pope. Occasions, of course, arise when the sword must be unsheathed, as when a nation has to defend its rights, its liberties, or its very existence. Even then war is a harrowing, though necessary, calamity. We may well long for the day when brute-force will no longer be the judge of right and wrong ; when men " shall turn their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into sickles : nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they be exercised any more to war."