vatican policy (1925)

8/6/2019 Vatican policy (1925)

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J O U R N A LO F T H E

B R I T I S H I N S T I T U T E OF

INTERNATIONAL A F FA I R S

J A N U A R Y, 1925

VATICAN POLICY I N T H E T W E N T I E T H C E N T U RY

(Pa pev read on December g.tj2, 1924.)

IT is nc t easy to think of any subject of contempora ry politicalinterest which i t would be m ore difficult to hand le witho ut offencein the presepce of a mixed assembly, tha n th a t of t he policy of t heVatican in the twentieth cen tury. An elemen t of ancient pre-judice (dating, it may be, from the Gunpowder Plot, and earlyimplanted in our patriotic souls by the annual happy despatch ofits principal conspirator) threatens in this connection to combinewi th a feeling of som etimes passionate reproach towards a ll whoduring the War failed to place their full resources, whether moralor materia l, a t the unfettered disposal of t he E nt en te Powers, andthus to im pai r th a t power of calm-I do no t say cold-con-

sideratioil to which the true student of ideas and events is deeplypledged. And a Catholic labours under this furthe r disadvanta ge,that his conclusions upon secular issues in which the Church isinvolved sometimes go suspected in the belief that he has longsince surrendered a t the instance of his ecclesiastical superiorsthe native obligation of th oughtful and disinterested judgm entupon ma tters within th e competence of t he individual hum anmind. These sor t of suspicions, tending as they do to depriv eone pa rty of th e fait h which th ey desire to feel in th e single-

heartedness of the speaker, and th e othe r of t ha t good-will andindulgence in his audience without which he can scarcely hope torender them anything but a limited and impoverished service,are best reckoned with at the outset. They will not seem tooformidable to those who believe that in all research and in all

NO. T.-VOL. IV . B

Journal of the British Institute of International Affairs , Vol. 4, No. 1. (Jan., 1925), pp. 1-29.


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2 B R I T I S H I N S T I T U T E O F I NT E R N AT IO N A L A F FA I R S [JAN.

deb ate Sweetness is the precursor of Light, and th at Sym path yand even Sentim ent, if held in check with cu rb and harness, ma yalso serve to d raw the chariot of T rut h.

All roads, they tell us, lead to R om e; and yet Rome remains a ta grea t remove from the unde rstanding of G reat Britain. Aquestion about anything Catholic inserted in a general knowledgepaper would be sure not to fail of its reward. " Will you endureto see a chasuble set up in your market-place?" Mr. Buchansupposes one of his chara cter s to say to a gathering of his fellow-countrymen. " Will you ha ve your daughters sold into simony?Will you have celibacy practised in the public streets? " 1 And,if we cannot lay claim to be compatriot with that celebratedwoman with the West in her voice who, on being admitted toa P apa l audience, advanced to the encounter w ith the salutation" How do, Pope ! Knew your father the late Pope! " ourpro pe rty in the excellent female who inqu ired of a monk, latelypromoted to the Sacred College, whether it was not the fact thatin cases like his the Pope was in the ha bi t of releasing a religiousfrom his vows of pove rty, c hastity and obedience, will not perha psbe called into dispute. Fo r such happy natures as these th eVatican furnishes an inexhaustible mine of romance, an ArabianNights E ntertainme nt more lively tha n any to be found in Bagdador Bokhara. The y perceive in th e Curia th e direct offspring ofthe Scarlet Woman and they are easily satisfied that no Pope,who has not learnt to circu mvent t he poison plots of his cook byliving upon eggs, will ever dare to be a reformer.

I t is tem pting to pursue these pleasant pa ths of fiction, forClio ha s a duller tale to tell. But learned societies have the irobligations, and the British Empire contains some fourteen

million Catholics to whose faith , feelingand ideals it is increasinglyimportant that their fellow-countrymen should pay some slightattention.

The dea th of Leo XI11 occurred in 1903. The close of his longreign coincided nearly with th e ad ve nt of ano ther ce nt ur y;an d th e sense of a new age-of an age in te n t upon change an dindifferent to experience-was imm ediately in th e air. Evenwithin the walls of the Conclave Past and Present met in uneasyconflict. Cardinal Ram polla, th e out-going Sec retary of Sta te ,was by virtue of his high character and long administration anobvious can dida te for the papal throne. H e would not, as com-pete nt authorities believe, have been elected; bu t even th e possi-bility of such an issue was sufficient to cause anxie ty to th e House

The Three Hostages.


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of Au stria, whose policy ran counte r to iiis own. Cardinal Puzyna,as a sub ject of t he Du al Mo narchy, was therefore instructedto assert, if circumstances required, th e ancien t right of v etoenjoyed by t he H absb urgs in the event of t he election of a Popedispleasing to the m, Nervous and evidently ill-informed, th eCardinal disclosed his manda te to prev ent the choice of Ramp ollabefore the re was an y need to do so. The Austrian right of vetocould not be denied, bu t th e exercise of i t was deeply resented;for it seemed to the men of the new centu ry th a t th e freedomof th e Sacred College shou ld go ent irely un fettered. ThoughRampolla's can dida ture was thus defeated, measures were imme-

dia tely taken to av ert an y repetition of the offence. One of th efirst acts of Cardinal Sarto, who ascended th e P ap al Throne w ithth e style of P ius X, was to sweep away th e ancient privilege ofthe Habsburg E mper0rs.l

The charac ter of th e new Pop e was strikingly beau tifu l. AVenetian of modest origin, he had ea rly attr ac ted the atte ntio n ofhis superiors by his piety, his understanding and his pastoralexcellence. Men found him a t once singularly lovable andsurprisingly firm. A little trick t hat he ha d of clenching his hand ,

when any considerable matter was in issue, discovered to thosewho knew him best a conscience void of o ppo rtunism a nd an un-bending rec titud e of purpose. Pra ye r was not with him confinedto the sphere of private needs; he brought his public actionswithin its scope; and he is said to have passed the night th atpreceded t he rup ture of t he Concordat with Fran ce on his kneesbefore th e tom b of the Apostle. His intim ates recognised in hima ma n of exceptional holiness; it is not imp robable th at theChurch will presently cawonise hirn as a saint. " Ce fut," saysM. CarrQe in a book that has been very widely read," sans doutede tous les papes qui sont pass& sur le trone de Pierre celui quipar son courage, sa bont6 robuste et les coups d'aile de son &me,s'est rapprochk le plus du p&cheurde Galilke."

Such a ch aracter, thou gh i ts possessor could scarcely rise, underth e conditions of m odern democracy, to th e highest places in th eState, has always had all uncontested value in the counsels andgovernment of the Church; and there is no more instructive com-

men tary upon much th at is still believed ab ou t the craft of Pa pa ldiplom acy than the accession of th is courageous, holy priest whom

The privilege was not peculiar to Austria, b u t was claimed also by th eSovereigns of Fr ance an d Spa in . I t does not appear to have rested upon anydefinite grant or other sure foundation.

L, CarrDre, Le Pnpe, p. 1 9 4 .


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people were accustomed, though, so far as academic distinctionwas concerned, qu ite erroneou sly, to th ink of as a boncurt decam$agne, to a position of supreme power in the direction of

Vatican policy.In tears a nd distress th e new Pope took u p the burden of hisoffice-that care of churches spread over a wider world th an anyth e Apostle of th e Gentiles ha d dream ed of, an d of a C hristendomrent by differences mo ral and spiritua l and soon to resort to w ar.B ut th e burden was imm ediately shouldered with a determinationth a t was everyw here felt an d an independence of m ind of whichth e selection of t he new Cardinal-Secretary was no slight proof.Mgr. Merry del Val was a t th a t time a young an d ard ent church-m an whose cosm opo litan origin,l knowledge of languages, clari tyof purpose and diplom atic ability combined together t o bring himin to notice. An English seminary education and a great dis-tinction of manner and bearing which makes of his celebration ofMass a t S t. Peter's, if such things can properly be th us regarded,one of th e lesser sights of Rome, give to his nativ e tale nts a singularsta m p and set tin g; and even still, though his non-Italian descentrenders it unlikely t ha t he will ever occupy S t. Peter's C hair, hispersonality remains perhaps the most striking and the mostdiscussed in Vatican circles. Gossip, which play s picturesquelyabou t the Curia and will have it to be divided into th e parties ofthe Zelanti and Politici, represents him as th e leading spiritamong th e Zealots an d t he enemy of all such as would compromisewith M odernism in Church or Sta te. W e may , perhaps, respect-fully infer th a t he has been a faithful steward of t he things com-m itted to his charge.

Pius X is said to ha ve discovered th e ra re qualities of Cardinal

Merry del Val only du ring th e course of the C onclave whichraised him to th e Papa cy. If it was so, th e choice of the newCardinal-Secretary was the more remarkab le. No two Church-men could hav e seemed less alike in disposition-the one allmarked with a noble simplicity; the other penetrating, versatileand accomplished. Yet the historian will find no flaw in theirco-operation. The Pop e had known his m an; the Cardinal cameto venerate his master. Th e great hea rt of th e one and th e fineintellect of t h e other worked toge ther with a common purp ose;

and th at purpose was profoundly good. I t might have been saidof them withou t inaccuracy th a t the re were diversities of g iftsbu t one spirit.

H e has Irish, Spanish, English and Dutch blood in his veins and an Englishtraining.


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19251 VAT I C A N P O L I C Y I N T H E T W E N T I E T H C E N T U RY 5

The aim of Pius X, as he himself expressed it , was" to restoreall things in Christ," and it would be no fanciful nor un auth enticphrase to say th at the Cardinal looked no further tha n the Gospelsfor a m an ua l of public policy. Both men believed, in tru th ,tha t, wh atever prerogatives th e Church m ight properly lay claimto in vi rtu e of her Divine Mission, th e da ys required hert o conquerher kingdom afresh-to conquer it as from the beginnin;: and, bythe same means that had carried her to victory some nineteencenturies befo re; by goodness, b y patience , by suffering, if needbe, the loss of all things , by love unfeigned, b y th e arm our of Godon th e right han d and on th e left. Th e world was theirs to win

aga in; an d it was with Apostolic fervour and evangelical fait hthat they faced the political problems of their time.Of these problems th e two most urgent, and pe rhaps also th e

most interesting, were those connected with th e breach of th eConcordat in France and with Catholic Action in It a ly ; and theirmention m ay serve respectively t o illu strate th e policy ofPius Xin its passive and active aspects. When he came to the throne thelong accommodation between Church and State which Napoleonha d bequ eathed to the French Governments of the nineteenthcen tury ha d plainly spent its strength. Ta ct and moderation,exemplified in Cardinal Ferrata, who represented the Holy See inFrance in the last decade of the c entu ry, did indeed what t he ymight to s tay the storm; and Leo XI11 in a conciliatory Encyc licalof 1892 discountenanced t he plans of t he Catholic Monarchists ofFrance by reaffirming that " th e civil power, upon every the ory,comes from God." Bu t no tact an d no moderation could per-m ane ntly ha ve held back t h a t tide of opinion which is driving ourmodern societies, with whateve r u ltim ate consequences to them -selves, tow ards a fullness of secularism unparalleled in paga ntimes. The anti-clerical spi rit, born of th e French Revolutionwith its hatred of kings and priests, and fanned on the part ofFrench Conservatives by follies, amongst which their at tit ud e inthe Dreyfus affair may be reckoned the greatest, can never bereconciled to th a t older conception of Church and S ta te (set for thonce again by Leo XIII) as kindred institutions bearing to oneanother the same relation as th e soul bears to the b od y; and th e

best accommodation that we can look for between the ideas ofthe Christian and the Secular State for many years to come isone which gives to each pa rty to t he issue fair play for its thoug htsand no play for its passions. Such an Anglo-Saxon way of hand-ling th e ma tter, even though it falls short of the Catholic ideal ofunity in things essential, liberty in things doubtful and charity

B 2


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in all, things whatsoever, was qu ite beyond th e limited politicalintelligence of th e French a t th at date . As commonly happen s,th e apostles of freedom showed themselves more incapable of

toleration th an those whose intolerance they affected t o denounce;and the Concordat failed because concord was no longer the endth at th e secularists had in view. A last atte m pt to sustain itwas made by the Vatican after the enactment by Waldeck-Rousseau in 1901 of th e Law of Associations. Fo r th e sake ofpeace t he religious orders were permitted to conform to th e require-men ts of th e new statu te, subject only to one or two provisionsdesigned to secure their ancient institutions and distinctivecharac ter. This concession might perhaps ha ve delayed a diplo-matic rup tur e if Combes had n ot im mediately replaced W aldeck-Rousseau as head of th e French Governm ent. Th e new Prim eMinister, as his predecessor indignantly expressed it, substituted" une loi d'exclusion " fo r " une loi de contr6le." Th e sepa raterequests of th e threa ten ed o rders for permission t o remain inFra nce were refused e n bloc by the Chamber and, to complete th eproject of religious devastation, it was proposed to suppress allcongregations exclusively devoted to religious instruction and

to withdraw the right to teach from such congregations ashad i t .At this critical juncture, President 1,oubet decided to return

th e visit of th e King of It al y and flout th e injunc tion of th eVa tican aga inst the presence of t h e heads of Catholic St ate s inRome. I t is a mistake to regard th at injunction as no bette rth an a piece of wounded vanity . I t was p ar t of th e Pope's caseagainst his treatment in 1870 that a national parliament hadtaken upon itself to settle an international concern, since thefreedom of th e Church from n atio na l influences is noth ing less.The action of the French President in setting foot in the Italiancapital constituted, therefore, a tacit abandonment by France ofthe protest which she had hitherto offered, in conjunctionwithSpain and Austria, to th e Ital ian Law of G uaran tees; and we canhard ly do ubt, in the light of w hat subseq uently occurred, th at itwas intended a s a slap in th e face for th e Pope. Th e Vatican,however, did not immediately withdraw its representative fromP ar is ; and th e incident might hav e passed out of mem ory ifthe French A mbassador to the Pap al Court, acting on th e instruc-tions of his Government, had not taken exception to some addi-tional words in th e Pap al protest, con ~m un icated o one of thesmaller Catholic Powers and pub lished byM. Jaur&s nL ' H u t ~ ~ a n i t k ,to t he effect tha t only grav e reasons of an exceptional natu re had


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79251 VATICAN POLICY I N THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

preve nted the recall of the Nunci0.l Ca rdinal Merry del Val,suddenly confronted with this relatively trivial issue, invited t he

Am bassador to pu t his representations in writing, promising hima n imm ediate answer. A course which would have satisfied aGovernment anxious for peace did not, however, commend itselfto a Government resolved upon rupture . Th e French Am-bassador took his leave, contenting himself with saying that hiscountry regarded the request for a written interrogatory as anevasion. The French Mission was, however, maintained for somemonths after the Ambassador had left . Then, on the ground tha tthe Pope had exceeded his powers in summoning the Bishops of

Lava1 and Dijon t o R om e in connection w ith ce rtain ecclesiasticalcharges against them, the breach was made formally complete.The Separation Law offered the French clergy a precarious tenureand maintenance a t the option of a sort of local vestry m eeting(association cultuelle) in place of th e establishment secured to th emby th e Concordat of 1802 in retu rn fora surrender of the Churchproperty with which the Revolution had m ade free. There arethose who in such circumstances would reflect that half a loaf isbetter tha n no bread. The Vatican remembered th at man doesnot live by bread alone; and the offer was rejected.

I t remained t o blacken the trail of Rom an diplomacy. In1906 th e archivist of the former Nunciatu re in Paris , Mgr. Monta-gnini, was suddenly expelled from France; his pape rs were seized;and the press declared itself in a position to inform the publicth a t these had revealed th e existence on the pa rt of the expelledMonsignore of a conspiracy in conjunction w ith ce rtain Fren chpriests to de feat th e laws of the coun try. A Parl iamentary

Commission, it is true, subsequently discovered that the versionof t he compromising documen ts published by t he newspapers ha dbeen garbled, and the examining judge declared the methodsfollowed in their seizure to have been gravely irregular. Bu t itwould be unreasonable to expect that such circumstances shouldbe noticed by those-and th ey ar e th e large m ajo rity of us-whoar e condemned to reach quick conclusions from po pular premises.

The subsequent h istory of the relations between Fra nce and t heHoly See is not unedifying an d m ay be conveniently summ arisedhere. The French Government, hav ing spoiled th e Church of itsproper ty, presently discovered th e practical inconveniences of th eru pt ur e of intercou rse; and this most of all when throug h thebreak-up of Turkey, the traditional French Protectorate overCatholic interests in th e Levan t became a d iplom atic card of some

I See Lavisse, Hkstoire de la France Co~ztem+oraine, V I I I , p. 233.


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8 BRITISH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS [JAN.

importance. The fact th at Perfidious Albion ha d during th e warestablished a mission to the Vatican could not be ignored anddoubtless stimulated the wish for a rapprochement with the H oly

See. Ev en tua lly in 1920 direct diplo matic relations were resumed,and in 1921 an ambassad or was sent in the person of M. Jon na rt.This resumption of intercourse ha s resulted in a modified accept-ance by th e Vatican of the fait accompli in Fran ce, where associa-tions dioce'saines safeguarding t he a ut hori ty of th e bishop, h av enow replaced th e associations cultuelles, bu t i t d id no t preve nt th eFrench from suffering a minor dip lom atic reverse over the questionof th e precedence to be accorded to French consula r officials inPalestine. Eith er on this or other groundsM. Herriot apparentlyinten ds to suppress th e French Mission to the Holy See. I t doesno t appear t o be a sagacious decision, if only because, as CardinalMerry del Val is once reported to hav e observed," France is toogrea t a lad y to come up t he back-stairs."

The ruptu re of the C oncordat and t he breach with the FrenchGovernm ent were the outst andin g political events of th e Pontifi-ca te of Piu s X, though the development in his time of whatis technically called " Catholic Action " in Italy has as great if

not so obvious impo rtance. F or in Ital y, as we mu st alwaysremem ber, th e perenn ial problem of Church and S ta te is presentedin its most definite outlines, as well as in its most dra m atic colours.The co nstitution of Modern It a ly specifically recognises Catholi-cism as th e religion of th e S ta te and, if we m ay ta ke as our guideth e census of 1911, when over ninety-five per cen t. of the popula-tion wrote themselves down as Catholics, Catholicism is also-and this is not invariably the case with established churchesnowadays-the religion, so fa r as they have one, of all bu t anegligible portion of t he citizens. Ye t, for all th a t, the highestauthorities in Church and St ate can neither meet nor e ntertainofficial relations, and, a t th e m oment of which we ar e speaking,Catholics who took their religion seriously were still barred frompartic ipa ting in th e public life of the country-from voting, th a tis, or standing for Parliament by the so-called" Non Expedit "decree of Pius I X issued in 1879.

In this deplorable situation is to be found the genesis ofCatholic Action. Th ere remains always to the citizen, even whenall the direct avenues to political work are blocked, that lessobvious bu t hard ly less im portan t sph ere of public a ctiv ity wherethough ts are framed and ideas transm uted, sometimes from basemetal into gold, though as often perhaps from gold into basemetal. Th is is th e region where committees and congresses


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19251 VATICAN POLICY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 9

flourish; and it was towards such forms of association th a tCatholic citizenship had turne d in th e la tte r years of Pius I X and

during the reign of Leo XIII. That our institutions should bepenetrated by Christian feeling and formed on Christian models isth e desire of a ll who would ta ke t he ir stan d upon t he Gospels;that Christian ideas should be presented in their most definiteshape and developed meaning is th e aim of the Catholic, orpotentially Catholic, spirit. The object of Catholic Action, the n,was to thro w the full light of Ch ristianity upon t he problems of t hemodern State. Those who would fix i t s b i r thday say tha t it wasborn four yea rs afte r the loss of th e Tem poral Power of th e Pope-

on Jun e 12 th) 1874, to be precise-when th e National CatholicCongress was held at Venice. If we accept that date, we mayadop t also th e observation t h a t th e life of Catholic Action beganwith a thirty years' retreat. Fo r th irty years, so far as it ran inpolitical channels at all, Catholic enthusiasm surveyed a world itcould not touch and ha d no present hope of changing. Th is wasth e period of th e grea t Pa pa l Encyclicals on labour, democracyand kindred subjects-Encyclicals of which it is no t too much t osay th at they taught hum anity without socialism and a doctrineth at was not doctrinaire. T he middle way of Christian democracywhich the Pope was pursuing, is, however, no broad on e; andyoung C atholic Ita ly , or those mem bers of i t who were led by D onRomolo Murri, found it too narrow for the ir visions. Seeming toconsent to the Pope's teaching, Murri continually deflected itsmeaning in a socialistic direction; and his activities caused aconfusion in the Catholic congresses and committees, andimp aired the coherence of th eir work. Only a ft e r Piu s X suc-

ceeded, however, did this situation come to an issue. A firm bu tconciliatory intimation from th e Cardinal-Secretary th at harmo nywith th e Holy See and am ongst themselves was required of th eadherents of Catholic Action ended in the fam iliar resort t o themethod of agreement an d difference just described-a device no tless useful in life th an in logic. This time Murri and his followershad miscalculated. Their proceedings were condemned in theofficial Osservatore Romano, and their President consequently felthimself obliged to resign. On July 30 th ) 1904, a lett er from the

Cardinal-Secretary dissolved th e old organisation, while retainingth e Socio-Economic Union-the insurance-societies, th a t is, th eworking-men's clubs and th e savings-banks. Two years lat erCatholic Action was reconstruc ted on lines calculated to assure th ecentr al control of th e Ho ly See and t o secure the influence of th eBishops. This recon stitution was notab le not only on this


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I0 BRITISH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (JAN.

account, but because by the creation of a department under thetitle of the Electoral Union it made provision for a new policy inregard to the strained relations between Church and State.

In 1904 Pius X had in a single case permitted the use of theCatholic vote in a parliamentary election ; in 1909 he authoriseda number of exceptions to the general rule; and finally in 1913,\vhilst in principle the theory of non-participation was maintained,in practice the rule changed places with the exception. In theworking of the new arrangement a certain but not an ultimateauthority was accorded to the President of the Electoral Union.Of this new orientation of policy one may say generally that itwas provoked by the necessities of the State rather than those of

the Church. The insufficiency of Liberalism to give coherence tothe nation it had done so much to create was becoming alreadyevident; and the assistance of a body of citizens to whom theideas of unity and order were as the marrow of their bones couldno longer be withheld except at a great risk to the country. Alreadyin this thing I taly was disclosing the central feature of a domesticsituation now generally apparent-the inability of Liberalism tosupport the burden of its offspring.

The breach, then, of the Concordat with France and thedevelopment of Catholic Action in Italy, illustrating as they doan evangelical indifference to material loss, and an equallyevangelical readiness to do the best one may by those who haveused one ill, stand out as the most notable events of the reign ofone who desired to restore all things in Christ. Of his otherpolitical works and all that he did in matters more strictlyecclesiastical neither time nor this place permit to speak. Butat the distance of a decade, which has severed us, politically

speaking, as by a century from what went before, it is easy tosee that his reign was unusually critical and distinguished-critical because the Church was crossing th e threshold of anotherage; distinguished, because his lofty character and admittedstrength and singleness of aim were peculiatly well calculated todispel, so far as this lies within the region of argument and ex-perience, the suspicion that the Vatican is no better than acabinet of astute politicians. From the Pope himself, as theyknew who knew him best, neither were the signs of the times

nor was their pregnancy concealed. He foresaw, with the insightof a statesman, the advent of the War and foretold, with thesingular instinct or vision that is sometimes to be found in saints,the hour of i ts approach. 1914 would be, so he declared, the da teof the catastrophe ; and when, in the spring of tha t year, Cardinal


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19251 VATICAN P O L I C Y IN THE TWENTIETH C E N T U R Y I I

Merry del Val ventured to question the danger, he repeated thewarning, " Non passiamo il quattordici." But the blow when itcame affected him none the less heavily that he had foreseen it.The representative upon earth of a religion that knows neither Jewnor Greek, that would have all men love one another, and everynation look upon the things of others, he bade a sad farewell tothose of his spiri tual children who were summoned from theseminaries and colleges of Catholic Rome to the standards of thewarring nations, whilst to the solicitations of Francis Joseph for ablessing upon the cause of the Central Empires he replied, with asuperb simplicity, tha t he blessed not war but peace. Within amonth he was dead, an exceptionally good man, killed, as hisintimates thought, by an unusually great adversity.

There is some reason to suppose that the policy of Pius X ifhe had lived through the War would have differed from that ofthe Pope who succeeded him. He excelled Benedict XV both insimplicity and strength, and he had the advantage, which in anoffice like his, a t a t ime such as that , can hardly be over-estimated,of a ten years' pontificate behind him. The moral philosophy ofthe Church, if I have rightly understood it, whilst it does notat tempt to deny that the great offence of war must come, hedges

warlike operations in with certain restrictions, which might havebeen more accurately defined if the Vatican Council of 1870 hadbeen able to run it s intended course and discuss i ts internationalprogramme. Broadly speaking the guiding principle of Catholicmorality in the particular issue that arose would seem to be thebelief that a military objective can only be legitimately pursuedwhen it is specifically indicated. The promiscuous dischargeupon unfortified cities of bombs or shells aimed at nothing inespecial, or the promiscuous sinking of ships within a certain areaby submarine warfare, appears on this basis to fall outside thelimitations of what is permissible. Pius X might perhaps havespoken of these things more clearly than was done by Benedict XV.But no one can explore the question even in the most superficialway without perceiving the vast embarrassments that any hastyapplication of the Catholic theory would have given rise to. Adistinguished ecclesiastic who suggested to me in Rome that somerestriction of the sort indicated, if imposed by authori ty upon theconsciences of Catholic soldiers, might serve in the future as alever to restrain non-Catholic governments from coercing theirnationals to make use of things forbidden, seemed to me, I mustconfess, to be living in a world of faith and hope to which I hadnot the key. Yet it was towards some such end as this tha t the


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clamour against Benedict XV during the War, if it had anypractical aim or meaning at all, was presumably directed. W heth erth a t clamour would h ave been any the less if the va tic an h ad takenupon itself to decide judicially what was righ t and wh at w as wrongin regard to t he issues th a t arose and t o declare who had violatedthe laws of humanity and who had not, may well be doubted.Th e Pope, as Protestants sometimes failed a t th at t ime to remem-ber, is not on thei r showing th e a rbit er o r censor of Christendom,nor even the P atri arc h of t he W est, bu t th e Bishop, if he be somuch, of th e City of Rome. Fo r even abou t this last propositionthere seems to hang some doubt. " I believe, my Lord "-soa recent Pope is alleged modestly t o hav e remarked to a n Anglican

Bishop of Gibraltar-" th a t I am in your diocese."However this m ay be, Benedict XV a t all events worked along

other lines than those prescribed for him by English publicopinion. Though his uttera nce s contain from the first somegeneral condemnations of wrong-doing, and even one or twospecifically directed against t he Ge rm ans; though, for example, inJanuary 1915, he denounces " every injustice by whatever sidecomm itted," and Cardinal Gasparri, th e Pap al Secretary, presentlyamplifies this by saying th a t" th e invasion of Belgium is directlyincluded in the words used by the Holy Father" ; though, asColonel Repington asserts in hisDiary,l the re is reason t o believeth a t, ha d evidence of th e alleged mutila tion of a Belgian childor the violation of a Belgium nun been procurable, the Popewould have been ready to launch a vigorous pro tes t; and thoughGeneral Ludendorff during his trial a t Munich this year devotedmuch of his speech to showing th a t R om an Catholics were re-sponsible for man y of G ermany's an d Prussia's ills, still Benedict's

incontestable aim was to prove himself neutral in the conflict.His reasons for this are obvious. I n the first place, and above allhe desired t o show himself a peace-maker; for peace-making, evenif we sometimes forget it, remains one of th e paradoxical ha bitssingled ou t by Christ for benediction. In t he second place,neutrality secured for him a large opportunity of human servicewhich must otherwise have been denied t o him. Unidentifiedwith either par ty in t he struggle, he was able th e better to under-take the works of mercy on behalf of both. To him, in fac t, m any

prisoners owe their exchange, many missing soldiers their dis-covery, many interned civilians their liberation, and many sickand wounded combatants their best chance of restoration tohealth. Th e project of hospital tre atm en t in Switzerland was

Diary, 11, p. 447 . a 1924.


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suggested and accomplished by him, and this single achievementmould have caused a man less eminent to be reckoned among thegrea t benefactors of mankind. The fulminations of Justice areno do ub t worthy of respect, bu t Ch arity has sometimes a moreexcellent way.

Apart from all this, however, there was a great gulf fixedbetween t he policy of t he Pope an d th a t of t he belligerents. Along diplomatic experience had taught the Vatican to know themerits of a negotiated peace, bu t th e conduct of a gre at war wasa new thing to dem ocracy ; and wa nt of passion seemed a greaterperil th an shortn ess of thoug ht. Those who have learned fromMrs. Asq uith's A.t~tiobography1 that her husband described Lord

Lansdowne's much-abused letter as"

excellent and sensible"

who have read Mr. Lloyd George's post-war confession that inJuly 1914 " no one at th e head of affairs qu ite meant war," th a twar was, in fact, something into which the governments" glided,or rather staggered and stumbled," and finally who have seenanotorious pacifist placed a t th e head of th e British Governm ent,wi th th e consen t, if not t he goodwill, of t he leaders of th e two olderparties, and achieving a European settlement which had for sixyears proved to be beyond th e capac ity of the advocates of a

dic tated peace-those who have marked these things will judgethe Pope's policy more generously tha n did contem porary opinion.Peace, as our ancestors seldom forgot in t he struggle with N apoleon,is so great a good tha t it is constantly wo rth trying for. Nor is thewrath of man so well assured of working the righteousness ofGod th at we can afford to let it go unb ridled. I n the light ofhistory th e Pope 's much-abused Peace N ote of August1917,with its unimaginative, old-time phraseology, may even come toseem a nobler thing than the magnificent and moving speechesin which Woodrow Wilson enshrined the case of th e Allies.Shakespeare has caused every patriotic hea rt to b eat more quicklyby the address of the English King before Agincourt, but he hassurely reserved a deeper eloquence and a subtler pathos for themou th of th e Kin g of France, where th a t sovereign is mad e toremind his courtiers how at Cressy Edward111 " smiled to see "the Black Prince

"Mangle the work of nature, and defaceThe patterns that by God and by French fathersHad twenty years been made."

War need not be sin, nor victory bring forth a crime, yet forthose who have to prov e their discipleship by love-for them a t

Autobiography, 11, p. 267. ' Henry V, A ct 11, sc. iv , 1. 60.B 3


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any r at e among a ll th e peoples who dwell upon the earth-peacemay well be a passion and negotiation a more excellent, a neverwholly-to-be-neglected way. The Pope's Eirenicon must bejudged as the w ork of one who still sustained, amidst every dis-couragement and disappointment, the sta nd ard of a CatholicChristendom. I n this respect the Note treated as if i t werealiving faith th at which is so often no more tha n a journalistic orpolitical convention-the idea of th e brotherhood of Christianmen. A Lu thera n kingdom may , for augh t I know, be incapableof responding t o such a thou gh t, bu t i t is ha rdly wise for those tothink so who hold the name of Luther in esteem. O r else thePope might seem to be more charitable towards their brethren

than they are themselves.Thus, then, the sanguine assumption th a t a Christian civilisa-tion is not yet lost to Christianity underlies the Peace Note. I nother respects the Note might be described as a business-likedocum ent, not blind to a hope of bette r things, nor blinded bythe IdeaZPoZitik (if I m ay call it so) of those t h a t dream toorashly. I t starts by claiming tha t i ts author has had three thingsin view above all : perfect impartiality; the pursuit of thegreate st good possible, according to th e law of charity , w ithou trespect of persons or distinc tion of nationa lity or religion; an dlastly, a just an d lasting peace. The Pope then recalls th at fromthe first he has in general terms exhorted t he warring peoples tomodera te counsels. But now, afte r three years of war and in faceof a civilisation rushing to ruin with gathering momentum,heturns to the governments with detailed suggestions for a settle-ment. W here, he asks, ar e to be sought the bases of a just a ndlasting peace ? And he finds the answer by opening up two linesof conciliation-in th e first place th e substitu tion of the forceof righ t for th e force of a rm s by means of m utua l disa rm am entand international a rbitratio n, and in th e second place the rem ovalof th e barriers t o free com munication between the na tions of th eworld, amongst which barriers he includes,in a phrase needingmore definition t han i t here receives, the freedom of th e seas.

For the rest, reparations, he thinks, will have to be settled,except in some special cases, by m utua l condonation; and th iscondonation is to be recompensed by m utua l disarmam ent. So,

again, occupied territorie s mu st be restored by both parties-Belgium and the occupied districts of France by Germany and th eGerm an colonies by England . These initial acts of restitutionshould, he holds, pave th e way for a fair discussion of th e terri -toria l questions in issue between the belligerents-the questions


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19251 VAT IC AN P O L IC Y I N T H E T W E N T I E T H C E N T U RY 15

of Alsace-Lorraine, and the Trentino, and Poland, and so forth.r r Everyone recognises," concludes this vir pietate gravis," t ha ton the one side and on th e oth er the honour of arm s is safe. Lend,

therefore, your ear to our prayer, accept the paternal invitationth at we address to you in the nam e of the D ivine Redeemer, thePrince of Peace. Th ink of your very hea vy responsibility beforeGod and ma n ; upon your resolves depend the repose and the joyof innumerable families, the life of thousands of youths, in a wordthe happiness of the people t o whom i t is your absolute dut y toassure these boons. . . . May Heaven grant that, in deservingth e plaudits of y our contem poraries, you may gain also for your-selves the name of peace-makers amongst fut ur e generations."

The W orld, or a t least the rulers of it, did not share the am bitionsof the Pope; and least of all in Germany. There is reason tothin k th at th e project of peace might ha ve been welcome toBethmann-Hollweg and opportune, if the Bolshevist Revolutionhad not a bou t this time revived th e hopes of the German mili-taris ts. B ut it fell in th e tim e of the Chancellorship of Michaelis,th at transient and embarrassed phantom, whom the military pa rtyset up in the early sum me r of1917, bu t who faded with the fadingof th e leaf. T hat Michaelis desired to refuse th e Pa pa l PeaceNote but t o throw the odium of it s rejection upon the E nte ntePowers is rendered something more tha n a conjecture by th erevelations of Philipp Scheidemann;l and it is perhaps anequally safe opinion to suppose that Michaelis's disingenuousdiplomacy first convinced the Vatican that, if neither group ofgovernments were eager for a peace of mutual understanding,th e German G overnment was certain ly th e less eager of the two.The War, a t any rate after the summ er of1917, became more and

more manifestly a fight to the finish, and the Pope for better orworse passed, as the saying is, ou t of t he picture. So far as canbe judged from the semi-official utt era nces of th e OsservatoreRomano, he accepted the ou tline of th e new world sketched inMr. Lloyd George's speech of January 1918. But neither in theevents that led to the German surrender nor the subsequentdeliberations in Paris had he any pa rt. He had stood for anegotiated peace, and the w orld had preferred a dicta ted one.

There is no way of effectively comparing a policy t h a t hasbeen tried with a policy th a t has not. There can be no certa intyth at t he Pope's Peace Note, even if i t had m et with a be tter Press,even if the En ten te Powers had been con tent with its mo deratecounsels, could have prevailed again st the m adness of th e Germans

Scheidemann, Pabst, Kaiser, und Sozialdemocratie.


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or their rulers. Yet no futu re critic is l ikely to contend th at thecrushing downfall of " the Kaiser " has proved a panacea for

hum an ills or the dic tate d Tr ea ty of Versailles a model of h um anwisdom. Against such advantages as th a t last year of th e W arsecured , he is likely to se t th e loss of th e flower of our tim e; thestar ved, unlovely childhood of many innocen t children; th e longparalysis of industry through which old men have lost theirrecompense and young men their opportunity; the enlargedopportunity of Bolshevism; the intensification every way of theunrest th at saps our purposes, of the griefs th at impair ourstr en gth, of t he bitterness th a t kills all good, of the desire of

vengeance that passes to and fro between nation and nation andbetween class and class, compelling us to pay the price of pridean d self-sufficiency. Against such evils he will, if h e is just, saythat Benedict strove to guard, doing what a Christian might tobring men t o a kinder mind and Christendom to self-consciousness.And he may furthermore take occasion to observe that Benedictreceived his promised reward-that he was reviled an d spokenagainst, and made safe from the condemnation that lies againstthose of whom a ll men speak well in this world, an d ready , so faras hum an eyes can see, to receive th e blessing th a t is promised tothe peace-makers in another.

This pacific Pope died in the January of1922, and, contraryto the expectation of his critics, transmitted to his successor,Mgr. Ratti, who now reigns as PiusXI, a diplomatic inheritancesingularly strengthened b y th e outcome of the W ar. " The devil,"Cardinal Gasparri is said to have observed some little while ago," cannot really be so competent as one supposes, for all the evil

of the last few years has resulted i n ou r deliverance from o ur th reeworst enemies-the Ts ar, th e Kaiser, and th e Caliph." Amongth e forces represented by these thre e figures th a t of Russia wasfrom the standp oint of the Vatican th e most formidable. H adConstantinople been adde d to th e Em pire of the R omanovs, hadSa nt a Sophia been wrested from th e followers of Mohamm ed an dthe Pa tria rch of New R ome been brough t und er th e influence ofth e Holy Synod , th e ecclesiastical problems of t he E as t m ust hav ebeen indefinitery com plicated. As thin gs are , th e downfall of th a t

which we hav e long, if incorrectly, styled th e Tsa rdom has openedto the Church a new and it may be not unfruitful field in thefrost-bound steppe s of Russia, where an age-long stag na tion ofdogma h as caused mo rality to grow faint. Not less has Romebeen th e gainer by t he transfer of t he Ho ly Places of Jerusalemfrom the hands of t he T urks to those of Great B ritain as the


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18 BRITISH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS [ J A N .

relations with t he Court of Rom e in a much more open a ndlegitimate man ner tha n ha s hithe rto been attem pted . If werefuse it, the bigotry will be on our side and most certainly noton th a t of His Holiness. Our un na tural alienation ha s produced,I am convinced, gre at evil and preve nted much good. If th epresent sta te of the world does no t m ake us learn something ourerror is much more culpable." Wise and disintere sted wordsfor which th e Catholic Church m ay well be grateful, a nd of whichneither Church nor S ta te in England have need to feel ashamed!I n the light of t hem we m ay welcome th e continuance of the BritishMission beyond t he period of th e W ar , th e official visit in1923of t he British Sovereign to th e Pope, when t he felicity of t h earrangements discovered to some of the onlookers the unrivalledexperience of th e Pa pa l Court in ma tte rs of cerem onial, and t heselection of a non-Catholic t o succeed th e two Catholic dip lom atistswho have been named. Sir Odo Russell, as he decided to callhimself, has revived the traditio n an d t he nam e of his father, whoin the lat ter day s of the tempo ral power acted as British Agentin Rome. " E vero," Pius I X is reported to have remarked of th efirst Lord Am pthill with a charac teristic touch of his lam bent

wit, " E ve ro; non e Cattblico, m a prote stante pessimo" ; and aman of whom t h a t could be said in those times would not be ill-equipped to represent the British people at the Papal Court inthese. Fo r, unless I am m istaken, there is a t the ir wisest a sort ofimp erial kinship between the politics of th e Pa pa l and BritishGovernm ents, a terrestrial catholicism of outlook, a commondetachment from the purely nationalist and frequently Machia-vellian att itu de of the gre ater continental State s, a stand poin twhere the ideal of the Pax Britannica does not seem too remotefrom that of the Pax Romana. This approximation of policymight be illustrated from a letter of the present Pope, addressedto Cardinal Gasparri in June 1923 : " We conjure those," hesaid, " who hold in their hands the destinies of the peoples onceagain to examine the different questions, and particularly thequestion of repara tions, in th a t Christian spiri t which does no tset a dividing line between reasons of justice and the reasons ofsocial ch ar ity on which the perfection of civil society is based . Ifand when the deb tor . . . gives proof of his serious will to makea fair and definite agreement, involving a n imp artial judgment asregards the limits of his own capacity to pa y an d und ertaking t ohand over to the judges every means of true and exact control,then justice and social ch arity as well as the ve ry interests of t hecreditors . . . seem to require tha t no demand shall be made from


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19251 VATICAN POLICY I N THE TWENTIETH CENTURY I 9

the debtor that he cannot meet without entirely exhausting hisresources an d his cap acity for production. . . ."

Utterances like this furnish the best apologetic for the British

Mission to the Vatican. Peace has not so ma ny friends th a ti t can afford the friendship of any of its prop hets t o fall out ofrepair; whilst the history of the relations between the League ofNations and the Vatican supplies in this connection, if that beneeded, th e stu dy of a gre at m istake. Fro m indifference, orprejudice, or shortness of th ou gh t, the Pop e was not inv ited toparticipate in th e counsels of the League. Yet its best advocate sare now bu t too well aware of th e value attach ing to Catholicsupport, above all in America, where Catholics are many and

whole-hearted sup porters of th e League are, a t least relative ly,few. Th e error th a t has been made is in all probability notirreparable, and the presence of a Pa pa l representative a t Genevain a n advisory capacity m ay some da y serve to co rrect an unfor-tuna te impression. I t is an error the less pardonable th at therecould have been no question of the acceptance of formal member-ship of th e League on th e pa rt of th e Holy See. And this for tworeasons. The members of t he League are pledged in certaineventualities to the use of coercion; and th e P apacy has nei therforce a t its disposal nor the w ill to use it in international quarrels.Also there are issues, amongst which we may guess that theRom an Question would be one, th at the Church would not consentto sub m it to an y tribu nal for decision.

Yet, even had all civility been shown, there must still haveremained obvious difficulties to overcome before these two greatinstrum ents of goodwill towards men could have draw n together.The League is young and enthusiastic, the Church old and ex-

perienced. A measure of scepticism ab ou t th e one must be per-mitted to the other. I t is impossible but th at a body which con-verted the public law of Ro me to the uses of Christianity a nd madeof it th e code of Christendom, should perceive how ill-situated is aheterogeneous League of h'ations to deal scientifically with thedeeper problem s of cosmopolitanism-with definitions, for example,of peace and justice, with their relation the one to th e other, andtheir respective place in our philosophy; with the problem uponwhich foundation that s tructu re of internationa l morality which the

League is feeling afte r should be laid-whether, as th e canonistsand the Rom an jurists b efore them supposed, upon the basisof a nation al law common to a ll the peoples of th e ea rth , or only,as Vattel and Bentham would have held, upon a body of inter-national agreements and understandings in which every nation is


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its own arbiter of right and wrong; with the question, again, sovit al after all to such idealism as tha t of the L eague, upon w hatratio na l grounds of f aith we can requ ire the stronger nations of th eworld to quit the too familiar paths of natural selection for amore hum ane, a more catho lic science of public ethics.

Immense questions which in one shape or another mustchallenge th e League and which it can ne ither a t preserzt determ inenor ultimately altogether shun. Immense questions, abo ut whichth e Church has long ordered and directed its thoughts, developingthem g radually after its m anner in accordance with changed timesand new conditions, as may he seen in th a t re-statem ent of th e old

public law of Christendom which, under the title of the Vaticancodex of 1917, Piu s X and Bened ict XV caused to be pu t fo rth ,and inferred from the expectation that PiusXI may within thenext few years reassemble the summarily-adjourned VaticanCouncil of 1870 to discuss such inte rnat iona l problem s of W ar andPeace as lay upon it s agenda, but in th e event were left untouched.For the rest, it is in point to remember, as Seeley has told us inwords not yet grown old, that the great forces which bind com-munities toge ther are those of in ter es t, of race, an d of religion.1The League is possessed of th e first-of th e intere st of peace, sofar as men desire it . I n the natu re of things it cannot have thesecond ; i t cannot have the bond of race. W ha t has it to say tothe th ir d ? Is not religion the life-blood of an y movem ent th a twould establish the brotherhood of men and teach every na tion t olook disintere stedly upon the things of ot he rs? To Catholics, a tleast, it must seem as if only a catholic faith could furnish thefoundation of a catho lic society. Nor can we be surprised if toth e authorities of a Church, which a t it s worst mo men ts has neverfeare d to display th e nam e an d symbols of Christ, a grea t interro-gation-mark should seem to hang above the work of an assemblyth at hesitates so much as to nam e the nam e of God.For not thuswere the great victories of a Christian civilisation originally won.

Amongst those of whose presence in Rome during th e GreatW ar Great Britain has reason to make mention, Cardinal Gasquetis prom inent. En tru sted w ith the revision of th e te xt of theVulgate, he afforded to this co untry th e rare ad van tage of a

Cardinal in Curia a t a tim e when th e possession of such adignita ry was of unusual value. His rejoinder to Cardinal H ar t-mann, when that prelate unexpectedly presented himself at thePalazzo San Calisto, in th e early day s of th e struggle, has becomeclassic. " Your Eminence," said the German, " let us not speak

Political Science, p. 7 0 .


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219251 VATICAN POLICY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

of war." " Neither, your Eminence," said the Englishman," letus speak of peace." Less familiar, bu t as w itt y and not less ap t,was his designation as " the g(u)i l ty image " of th a t new gilded

statue of Victor Emmanuel which, standing up incongruouslyabove the Capitol, commemorates the overthrow of the Pope'stempo ral power by a striking encroachment upon th e realm of a rt .

Th e Cardinal's epigram, whateve r we m ay thi nk of it , fitlyintroduces the thir d and last section of this pape r. Just a s thebreach of th e Concordat and th e developm ent of Catholic Actionfix th e eye as the leading issues in t he pontificate of PiusX, andthe W ar a nd th e League in tha t of Benedict XV, so does th eRom an Q uestion s tand out in th e pontificate of the present P ope.

I n those same ap artm en ts in the Palace of San Calisto, whereCardinal Hartmann met his match, one might have caught fromtime to tim e a glimpse of Monsignor, or, as he had become before th eclose of Benedict's reign, of CardinalR att i . The love and care ofbooks had m ade him intim ate with Cardinal Gasquet, and he wasaccustomed to visit his old friend as occasion offered. Such anopportunity occurred during the Conclave which followed thede ath of Benedict. As the two men parte d, the E nglishman

observed th a t th e pleasure of t he evening's conversation had beenmarred for him by the reflection that it was likely to be the lasttim e th at his guest would come there. Th e other in surpriseasked him what he me ant? " In a week's time," replied CardinalGasquet, " we shall have locked you up for good in th e Vatican."H e was not mistaken. The lot fell upon Cardinal Rat ti , and hewas numbered amongst the Popes. Though m any able menhave sa t in the seat of S t. Pete r, none of equal learning has beenfound there for m any years past. And t o the gift of knowledge

they who know him best would, I believe, maintain that thisclimber of mounta ins (now, so fa r as one can see, confined for allhis remaining day s within th e limits of a garde n) addsin ama rked degree th e gift of a calm and deliberate judgment. Fo rth e rest, his courtesy wins all affections. I cann ot forget witness-ing his behaviour a t a public audience. I t is the custom on suchoccasions for all who attend to kneel as the Pope passes round,offering his ring to each in turn to kiss. I noticed th at one m an,as if in protes t, h ad rem ained stan din g in a corner of th e room,just behind the kneeling line. Th e Pope neithe r passed him by,nor did the atten da nts bid him mind his manners. Christianityhas after all its own way of dealing with insults. I t seemed t ome a n act in perfect harmon y w ith all th a t he is here to representwhen, after pausing for a fraction of a second, Pius X I lifted his

B 4


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hand over the heads of th e ninety an d nine just persons who didhim honour to tender it to the single wayward objector whodisdained his office.

I t was perhaps this superb cha rity of soul th at led the Pope a this accession to offer again t o th e C ity a nd the World t he lapsedcourtesy of th e Pa pa l Blessing. There were those who took i tfor the prelude to an abandonment of the old, irreconcilableat tit ud e of the Pap acy tow ards th e new rdgime which had deprivedit of its temporalities. B ut it was not so intended, and PiusXIhas since had occasion to show how scrupulously careful heis no t t o pass outside the recognised precincts of th e Vatican.

For Papal Rom e does not believe th at right and wrong ar eobjectively altered by t he passing of years, bu t only th at , asgenerations pass, th e m oral responsibility is subjectively modified.Other circumstances, however, have contributed to make bothsides to the qua rrel envisage th e Rom an Question otherwise tha nthey did a t th e time of th e mak ing of Modern Italy. Tim e in th efirst place has disentangled th e essence of th e problem from it ssetting. Th e essence of th e problem is th a t th e Pope should befree, an d th at his freedom to be catholic should be every whit aswell assured as Italy's freedom to be national. Any suspicion oflocal control in his counsels is gravely prejudicial to his positionas the Vicar of One whose thou ghts are not limited as our tho ugh tsby race and c ountry; and th e scandals of the Pap acy in th e MiddleAge-the Babylonish Cap tivity and th e Great Schism-are the reto make this plain. Th e Pap al States, so long as they existed,safeguarded t he Pope's freedom, not perfectly bu t ye t sufficiently,and, when the Temporal Power was suppressed, the makers ofModern Italy were not wholly blind to the fact th at they h ad todeal with an international problem needing the concurrence ofother Catholic Sta tes. I n fac t, however, the Law of Guarantees,which regulates (so far a s th a t c an be don e by th e a ct of one sideonly) the relation between the P apa cy a nd th e Kingdom of Ita ly,was passed by an Ital ian Pa rliam en t alone. No Sovereign State-and the Papacy had for centuries been noth ing less-could withdignity allow a local law to tak e the place of an intern ation altre aty, and least of all a local law which does no t even (as it is

sometimes wrongly supposed to do) guarantee to the Popesovereign rights over the palaces of th e Vatican , th e La tera n andthe Villa of Castel Gandolfo, but merely provides th at he shallcontinue to enjoy these residences a t th e pleasure of th e Ita lianGovernment.

Those who wish to unders tan d th e technical aspects of th e


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19251 VATICAN POLICY I N TH E TWENT IETH CENTURY 23

question must begin by appreciating that the sovereign rightsaccorded to th e Pope by th e law of 1871 ar e purely personal an dth at , in th e view of the Italian statesm en of th a t time, the sta tusof th e Pope was intended to a pp rox im ate to th at of a foreignsovereign residing upon Ita lian soil. To this the Pope was neverlikely to agree, for it is a sine qua non of any satisfacto ry settle-men t th a t he should be master in his own house.

Of t he reasonableness of t hi s point of view Modern Ita ly h as oflate become aware, partly because the War brought into clearerlight th e intrin sic defec ts of t he settle ment of 1871, and pa rtlybecause the philosophy of Liberalism which dictated that settle-ment is everywhere on th e decline. Th e Law of Gu aran tees m ad efull provision for th e presence on Ita lian soil of Fore ign Missionsaccredited to the Holy See, giving them diplomatic status andextra-territorial rights, but i t did not attempt to forestall thesituation which was bound t o occur as soon as It al y found herselfa t war with a Power still desiring to m aintain diploma tic relationswith th e Papacy. When indeed this situation actually arosein 1915, nothin g less th an the combined tact of t he Pap al andRoya l Governments could have saved it. W hilst conveying to th eVatican t h at it w ould faithfully honour th e pledges of the L aw

of Guarantees, the Italian Administration allowed the Repre-sentatives a t the Pa pal Court of Prussia, Bav aria and Austriat o understand th a t it could no t m ake itself responsible fortheir safety from the atta ck s of a n excited populace. Th ediplomatists concerned thereupon represented that they mightperhaps be housed in the Vatican Palace, but the proposal wasmet w ith a polite refusal. In these circumstances the y settled forthemselves th e difficulties of their position by retiring to Lugano,where for the remaind er of th e W ar th ey maintained relations withthe Ho ly See through th e medium of a P ap al Nuncio in Switzer-land. Th e plan, however, had its obvious disadvantages and wasbelieved to have been in part responsible for Pope Benedict'sun for tun ate tena city in retaining M gr. Gerlach, an Au strian ofdubious cha rac ter, as one of his cham berlains. Gerlach, suspectedby the Italian authorities of intriguing with the enemy, waseventually escorted to the frontier, and his case triedi n cameraaft er his departure by an Italia n Military Court. H e was found

guilty an d sentenced to lifelong imprisonm ent, bu t t he subsequ enthistory of th e witnesses upon w hose evidence he was condemned isscarcely more edifying th an his own; and his offences, whateverthe y were, were adm itted b y th e Court to hav e been unconnectedwith his official duties.


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Such inconvenient incidents as these exemplified the generalinconvenience of living with one's nejghbour on term s which ar ene ithe r term s of peace no r ye t of war, and calling him free an d

equal whilst all the while trying to fetter his independence.Nothing more, indeed, is needed to expose th e insincerity of th ese ttlem en t of 1871 than a clause in th e Pa c t of London of 1915-which pledges the Entente Powers to support Italian oppositionto an y representation of th e H oly See in th e peace negotiations oreven in an y discussion of th e issues arising out of th e W ar . T heclause, unless I am misinformed, though accepted by Lord Grey,was less acceptab le to Lo rd Grey's successor. I t reflected themind of Ba ron Sonnino-that strange, intrigu ing figure in whoseveins the re ran , beside his country's blood, the blood of Scot andHebrew-but no t, the re is some reason to suppose, th e mind ofthe P remier, Signor Salandra. The latter, i t is worth remembering,stood in a closer relation t o t he Vatican th an his Foreign Minister,if the y are right who say th a t com munications between th e Pa paland Ro yal Governments passed as a rule through t he medium ofBa ron Monti, th e Director of th e Fondo del Calto. However th a tmay be, and however well a sub rosa understanding between thetwo Powers may sometimes have worked, there can be no doubtthat Italy has become uncomfortable at seeing all the GreaterPowers of th e Ea stern H emisphere represented a t th e Vatican andherself sh ut out. H er feeling on this point burst a t last into un-controllable expression after the appointment ofhf. Jonnart asFrench A mbassador t o th e H oly See in th e sum me r of 1921; andthe Press became busy with debate. So vivid and so remarka blewas the public interest in this attempt to reopen the RomanQuestion, th at the Ita lia n Foreign Office took th e unusu al step of

collecting and issuing in pamphlet form the principal newspaperopinions upon th e subject.l Amongst these, two stood ou t pre-eminent-that of th e Messagero, a journa l no tab ly influential,dem ocratic an d anti-clerical, and t h a t of Osservatore Romano, th eofficial organ of th e Va tican. The argum ent of th e Messagero wasbased upon a fact and a faith-the fac t, already sufficientlystressed, that all the greater Powers, the United States aloneexcepted, and many smaller Powers enjoy direct diplomaticrepresentat ion a t the Vatican; the faith tha t I taly had emergedfrom the War strong enough and mature enough to envisage aproblem th a t ha d itself undergone a transformation. I t mighthave been a defence more broadly based to hav e said th at Ita ly

1 Uqze nuova discussione sui rapporti fra Chiesa e Slato ifz Ilalia. Roma :Libreria di Scienzie e Lettere. Piazza Madame 19-20.


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had grown willing to learn and anxious to forget; th at t heFascist Movement, whose Hour was approaching and whose Manwas already visible, was teaching anew what the liberal theorists

had let slip from the theory of th e S ta te; and th at the Papa l s ideof t he R oman Question had in th e calm light of history begun todisclose, to It al ian eyes a t lea st, a force and justice not previouslyperceived. Be this as i t ma y, the Osservatore Romano was plainlyentitled to claim as a result of th e article in the Messagero and th ediscussion to which it gav e rise, th a t" he Rom an Question existsand th a t it is in the interest of It al y to settle it." I t followed, asth e writer of th e article in the Osservatore-the Con te DelleTorre-went on to m ainta in, th a t the unilateral Law of

Guaran tees had fallen out of da te and th a t a te rritorial solutionwas both possible and necessary.

To such a point, then, had the long struggle between thePapacy and the Kingdom of Ita ly been brought after fifty years ofprote st. Pope after Pope ha d repeated in unswerving languageth a t th e very nat ure of th e Pap acy necessitates a full freedomand tru e sovereignty. But no tinge of bitterness nor shred ofwhat men m ight m istake for worldly am bition clings any more tothe d em an d; and in the view of the V atican authorities theterritorial autonomy that they seek can be received back onlyfrom th e willing hands of those whose fathers took i t away.Some observations of Cardinal Gasparri's, m ade during the yea rin which Italy joined the Allies, illustrate this attitude of mindwith g reat felicity. " Th e Holy See," said the Cardinal-Secretary," has no intention a t a ll of creating clifficulties for th e I talia nGovernment and puts its trust in God, expecting the convenientsystematisation of the situ ation , not from foreign arm s but from

th e trium ph of those sentiments of justice which it hopes willspread more and more amongst the Italian people in conformitywith their tru e interests." Seven years later, in 1922, Pius X Iwill be found saying the same thing even m ore simply an d directly:" Ita ly will never have to fear hu rt from th e Holy See."

Of this generous disposition towards t he Ita lia n people, as wellas ou t of the ha rsh anxieties of th e times, was born th e relaxationand ultimate removal of the old ban upon the participation ofCatholics in civic life. Catholic Ac tion, th e deve lopm ent of whichhas already been traced under Benedict XV, seized this largeropportunity and brought forth thePartito Popolare, the PopularPa rty , which, under th e guidance of a priest, Don S turzo, thoughwithout any official recognition from the Vatican, endeavouredto transla te Catholic social theories in to practic al politics. The


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new movem ent might have met with bette r fortun e if it h ad no tbeen alm ost insta ntly eclipsed by th e rise of the Fascisti, in whoseprogramme th e recogn ition of religion and the settle ment of th eRom an Question alike found a place. Mussolini spoke of bo ththese things with that uncompromising courage and directnessth at a re pa rt of th e secret of his streng th. Dismissing witho utceremony th e old, absurd, rhetorica l phrases of Carducci about th ePope-" th e blood-stained Vatican wolf," " the black Pontiff ofmystery "-or a t least relegating the m con tem ptuously to th esphere of ima ginative lite ratu re, the m aster of M odern Ita ly wenton to declare th a t from t he" eminently unprejudiced " standpoint

of Fascism"

the Latin an d Im peria l traditio n of to-da y isrepresented by Catholicism," and " that if, as Mommsen saidsome thirty years ago, one cannot stay at Rome without a uni-versal idea . . . the only universal idea which exists to-day inRome is th at which em anates from th e Vatican."

Strang e words in the m ou th of one who has sat in th e seat ofCavour and enjoyed the po pu lari ty of Garibaldi-and ye t no t sostran ge if we find in th e success of Fascism a ta rd y admission ofth at o the r body of political doctrine-true in its proper sett ing

like most other political ideas that have held the imagination ofmen-which is involved in th e much-abused Syllabus of PiusIXand h as been so unwittingly vindicated b y m uch of th e history ofthe last few years ! The olive branch was not embraced nor yetrejected. Not withou t reserves, no t without recalling to mindLeonardo da V inci's warning th at" a crime unpunished is a crimeintended," l th e Vatican has shown itself friendly to t he govern-ment of Mussolini; an d wi th good dispositions on either sidenoth ing is impossible. There are some indeed who, like M. JeanCarrhre, the au tho r of a much-re ad book, published this ye arunder the title of Le Pape, and alleged to have been not un-symp athetically read by th at high dignitary, look forward to asettlement under which th e *Pa pac y would receive in fullsovereignty a terr itor ial dominion-perhaps a str ip of lan d,reaching t o the sea, so as to insure comm unication with theouter world, perhaps only a few modest acres, just broad enoughto contain the Foreign Missions accredited to the Holy See.

Th e Vatican, as we have seen, is not greedy for soil, though tena-cious of sovereignty; and i t is possible th at such a settlement asthis might be arranged upon a peninsula where already thereexists, almost unperceived, th e Republic of San Marjno. To ha ve

See The Times. Oct . 14, 1924, p. 13, column 3, quoting OsservatoreRomano.


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279251 VATICAN POLICY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

done with th e old dispute, to remove the blot upon a lofty" scutcheon " and chase the shadow from a generous and en-nobling dream, must indeed appeal to every patriot heart and

every statesm anlike amb ition. Crispi's words remain on record," th a t he would be th e greatest of Ita lia n statesmen who solvedth e Ro man Question." And one of th e greate st of Ital ian s tate s-men is here.

B u t T ime passes for M ussolini as for all men; and th at whichis not achieved when popularity is at the full is less likely to beaccomplished when power is waning. W hen all ha s been said, th efact remains th at the two parties interested are reaching ou t handsto one another across an unbridged gulf of sentiment. The

Papacy, though it seeks no subjects a nd desires no new adminis-trative burdens, can never abate its claim to full sovereigntyover a territory however small, whilst Italy, though she wouldsuffer no appreciable loss by surrendering a few acres that evennow she d are no t occupy, will bring herself only with the greatestdifficulty to abandon one tiniest fraction of that which has oncebeen claimed as Italian soil. So it is not impossible that thesetwo Powers, who bear one another no true ill-will, may restdivided, until some new convulsion has passed across the face ofth e Ete rnal City, by th e barrier of a li t t le earth.

If, in conclusion, we ar e concerned to ask which Power of th etwo occupies the stronger diplomatic position, the answer canhardly be in doubt. Th e Vatican has bu t l i t t le to gain by a settle-m ent. To financial considerations it has shown from th e first th esame honourable indifference that it afterwards manifested inregard to th e breach of the Concordat with France. Release froma voluntary imprisonment would indeed give the Pope the most

coveted of modern blessings-a change of air-but th a t am enitymight have t o be paid for by an increase of tho se pe tty activitiesth a t poison the life of public men all the world over, and b y a lossof th a t majestic isolation, within th e ve ry confines of th e E te rn alCity, which at present invests his person, so far as circumstancescan do so, with the peculiar character of being in the world andyet not of it. The existing arrangement, though it could neverform the basis of an equ itable settlem ent, does not work too badly ,so long as th e protes t of t he Church aga inst any so rt of loca lisation

of t he Pap acy in a secular St at e is ma intained. W hen all ha s beensaid th e Pope remains a far greater figure in Rom e than any Kingof It a ly can hope to be-the greate st of a ll Roman monuments,th e oldest living of all Rom an tra diti on s, th e most impe rial of allRom an forces, and, if it comes to t ha t, the most profitable of all


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28 BRITISH INSTITUTE O F INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS [ J A N .

Rom an assets-so th a t the re is nothing th e Ita lian Government isless in a position to do tha n to throw him out. Let them speakto this predominance of th e Pa pa l over the R oyal position who

witnessed th e recent st ay in Rome of t he sovereigns of Spa in an dEngland and could tak e account of t he place tha t public imagina-tion accorded to their visits to th e Vatican, guests a s the y were ofth e King of Ita ly, even though tem porarily divested of t h a tcha racte r by a diplomatic fiction. Rom e without the Pope-he must be bfind who does no t see it-would be as th e fam ousrepresentation of Hamlet with the principal acto r left ou t. Andfor th a t reason, if fo r no othe r, whilst t he Quirinal would be gladto settle, th e Vatican can well afford t o wait. I t was a wise manwith gre at op portunities of observation who rem arked t o me inthis connection, that i t was no bad thing to have a grievance;and one might add that i t is an even better thing to have agrievance abou t which the offender has become uneasy. Tim ebrings its revenges, an d at times very subtle revenges; an d theadmonition to agree with one's a dve rsary quickly, whiles one isin the way with him, is advice which a nation sometimes hassubsequent cause to reflect upon when it pits local force againstworld-wide opinion. Th us then th e m att er might seem to standif th e issue is tried in secular balances alone. Ye t who can sa y ?These are not perhaps the only weights required, where we haveto deal with one who is the accredited champion of" peace andgoodwill amongst men," and with whom, if equity be onceestablished, chari ty may th e more abound.

At this point, a paper unduly extended may properly con-clude. Much more migh t be said , much more, indeed , if th esubject were to be thoroughly dea lt w ith, would require to be said.

Yet I shall no t have wholly failed if I have persuaded an y th a t aninsti tu tio n, the oldest living of all we know, whose voice goes ou tinto all lands and whose information is drawn from sourcesinfinitely more numerous than any that a merely secular govern-ment can command, is one which no stu de nt of politics can affordto neglect and no statesm an would be wise to ignore. I t does not,indeed, furnish the stuff of an international romance or a Pro test an tdram a. Th e Vatican is neith er rich no r crafty, nor the seat ofsecret conspiracies for th e subjug ation of mankin d, nor ye t agovernment organised to some surpassing pitch of administrativeperfection. I t l ives pr ett y much from hand to mouth, and not toowell a t that . I t has no deeper policy, no darker end than" torestore all things in Christ," thoug h i t finds th e chan nel of th a tpolicy, the m eans to t h a t end, in the existence of a visible Church


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299251 VATICAN POLICY I N TH E TWENTIETH C E N T U RY

and a well-defined creed; whilst of its administrative machineryi t was said t o me by a well-qualified observer: " th at E nglishmenwould run it better." Those indeed who see th e Papac y in its

tru e perspective will be th e least inclined t o attr ibu te it s age-longinfluence and perpetual vitality to mere human astuteness orsacerdotal craft. Not w ith such simplicity are its mysteriesexplained ! Century by cen tury men foretell its failure, and everand again it renews its you th. I t seems t o fall back continually,only to leap forward once more. It loses half a continent andsets to work to win a hemisphere. It s temp oralities are seized;its chief is driven into retirement; its dogmas are derided.Yet from o ut th e grea t convulsion of our time, when strong

kingdoms were cast down and ancient dynasties tottered and fell,it emerges the more venerable t h a t all the Caesars of yesterd ayhave gone the way of th e Caesars before th e m ; whilst, afte r longwarfare with i ts critics, it lives to see the work of th e TridentineCouncil much praised in our most independent and most pro-gressive weekly as the last serious attempt to order life uponageneral theory,l or, as we might say in more familiar language,to see life steadily an d see it whole.

Of such a Pow er as this which, unarm ed, survives th e kingdomsof the earth and in range of sovereignty ha s ye t surpassed them all,an age like ours, whose wisest leaders seek to think catholically,must needs ta ke some account. You will forgive me-a Catholicin a more technical sense than theirs-if I add, even though Icannot hope to engage all sympathies, that I believe this Power,within th e limits of th e visible world, to be t hat one which makesfo r righteousness abov e the rest.

ALGERNONECIL.

New Statesman, Sept. 2 0 , 1919, p. 619.

vatican policy (1925)

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