Marches were States of the Church. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies was under a Spanish dynasty; an Austrian Grand Duke had lately been removed from Florence, and Turin was still the capital of Italy. But the movement to make the geographical expression of Italy, united to some extent by one culture and for the most part an understanding of one language, into one nation was so strong that it overcame the rights of the Popes to maintain possession of the territories which they had ruled for far more than a thousand years. In maintaining her lawful possession of the Papal States, the Church was supported on the one side by Austria and on the other by France. But France, in return for all that part of Savoy which was west of the Alps, helped the dynasty of Savoy to fight the Austrians out of Lombardy and Venice; the Italians took possession of Florence, which in 1865 they made into their capital; and in 1870, when France was compelled by the German invasion to withdraw her troops from Rome, the Papal city was stormed by Italian invaders, who entered and made it for the first time Italian territory.

That which completed the national unification of Italy made her the open enemy of the head of her established religion. For not only were the Papal States the unarguable possession of the Church, not only were they the source of her revenue, not only was their independence the means of her neutrality as a spiritual power, but any attack upon her power or her right to administrate her territories was anathema to Catholic principles. The Vatican, therefore, protested with uncompromising vigor against the Italian occupation of Rome; and the Government of the King, who had established himself in a Papal palace, the Quirinal, retaliated by protesting against any recognition of the Pope as a sovereign

power, except by diplomatic representation at the Holy See. The Italian Government protested therefore, and protested successfully, against the Pope being represented at the Hague Conferences, at Versailles, or in the League of Nations. Although they had established Catholicism as the State religion, they could not themselves have any official relations with the Vatican.

This curious position had more important consequences. Although the passage of decades showed that the Catholic Church had not suffered any detriment to her spiritual power by the loss of her territories, that in fact her political influence increased, she was compelled to resent the weakness of her official status as a diplomatic entity. The laws of Italy accord to the Pope sovereign honors. If Italy admitted the Pope to have the same sovereign independence in his territory as the little republic of San Marino, M. Herriot could not at the present moment claim that it was favoring one religion if France continued diplomatic relations with him. Furthermore, the Pope could not be refused that representation at Geneva, and at all conferences of nations, which since the occupation of Rome was first accorded to him at the Conference of Genoa in 1922. And, furthermore, the very protest of the Vatican against Italy's occupation of Rome led in 1902 to a rupture with France. One of the points of that protest was to forbid the heads of Catholic States to visit Rome, but when, at the accession of Edward VII, the Entente began to influence Italy against her alliance with Austria and Germany, and President Loubet decided to visit Rome, he ignored the injunctions of the Holy See, and diplomatic intercourse between France and the Vatican was interrupted from 1902 to 1921. Edward VII, however, being a Protestant, when he visited Rome insisted on asking

for an audience with the Pope, and he took an important step toward reëstablishing relations between his Empire and the Holy See.

It is the anomalous relation between the Vatican and Italy which prevents the United States from giving an official recognition to the Pope. Washington does not dispute the contention of the Italian Government that the Pontiff is not an independent Sovereign.

III

If diplomacy is the official means by which one Power adjusts its interests with those of another, the object of the Powers represented at the Vatican will be to adjust their national interests with those of the priestly authorities of the Catholic Church. This involves the larger questions of national policy of which we heard so much during the war, and the details of particular convenience, such as the appointment of a bishop. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, the largest and best organized society in the world, has the general object of Christian influence over society, and the more particular object of ensuring that interest by freedom to appoint her own authorities, freedom to impart her own education, and the immunity of her priests from such unsuitable obligations as military service. Sometimes it is the question of the entrance of nuns into a European colony; sometimes it is the question of a sermon on a political subject; sometimes it is an arrangement for the personnel of missions so that Christian teachers may be patriotic teachers; sometimes it is the question of what religion is taught in a State school, or the fact that no arrangement at all is made for religious teaching; sometimes it is the boundary of a diocese, or the rights of a religious order, or the freedom of a seminary or of a school to manage its

own special business, which will need to be adjusted between the Catholic Church and a particular Government.

In all these matters the Church has always been on the happiest terms with the United States and Great Britain and Spain; her difficulties have been with Russia, Germany, and France. She will aim at the utmost freedom possible in her own appointments and her teaching, and also in obtaining State aid in the secular teaching of her elementary schools, wherever secular teaching is aided, or given free. In tussles of this kind Leo XIII defeated Bismarck, but Pius X and Cardinal Merry del Val three times came to an impasse with the Kaiser. It is interesting to notice that as a result of the concordat of 1801 with France the appointment of dignitaries had to be referred to the Government, but that now, as in the United States, where the Catholic Church has no diplomatic status, being represented, as in Japan, by an Apostolic Delegate, the method of appointment, according to the revised canon law, is simply for the Catholic authorities to refer a choice of names to the Holy See.

The war gave more dramatic instances of adjustment. In one case a German prisoner in England was forbidden by his commandant to see a priest; a Catholic layman was informed and sent from London to investigate; the facts as related in the complaint were found to be true. The Vatican was informed. In ten days the priest was giving the prisoner the sacraments. In another case Cardinal Mercier went to Rome to make arrangements about the work of the priests during the German occupation; on his return to Belgium the Germans refused to allow him to enter. He wired to the Vatican, and the authorities told the German Government that if he was not allowed to return to his work in two days the contents of certain documents would

be published. The Cardinal was allowed to return to his work immediately. In a third case, German Catholics asked that no Allied airplanes should attack the towns where they were celebrating the feast of Corpus Christi with the usual procession of the Host. The Allied Governments at once agreed. No one, however, thought of demanding the same concession from the Central Governments, who did not grant the favor they requested. A protest from the Allied Governments was immediately sent to the Holy See, which made the necessary representations to the Central Powers. But the temporary advantage gained by the Central Powers is an almost unique instance of the Vatican being hoodwinked. Generally when foreign diplomats go to Rome they say that those of the Pope are quite the ablest, or the most cunning, as the case may be, with whom they have ever had to deal. The Vatican's record in the war bears out that contention. As Colonel Repington said of Papal diplomacy, it is independent of elections and can afford to wait.

Professional diplomats are for the most part occupied with adjustments of detail. The time when their personal decisions were supported by all the authority of their countries has gone by. Telegrams control them, and the newspaper correspondent is a more important person than the writer of official dispatches. Diplomacy has tended to become, therefore, a rather second-rate affair; in Europe it tends to attract a type who, by their knowledge of languages, and their easy manners, can carry on a smooth intercourse with the officials of foreign countries. The trend is toward a finikin type. But diplomacy still transcends the diplomat, and the war gave striking evidence of the political influence of the Pope and his secretaries. His peace proposals attracted the attention of Govern

ments, and indeed of the whole world.

They were addressed not alone to those States which had diplomatic representatives at the Vatican. Indeed, they most depended on the answer given them by President Wilson and his Government. President Wilson, when in Rome in 1918, did not omit to visit Benedict XV, who delivered an impassioned eulogy of his work for peace. Since Wilson, the kings of Belgium, Britain, and Spain have been received by the Pope. It is interesting to compare the addresses delivered on these occasions by the Heads of these States and the Head of the Church.

England's King and Queen, who came in May 1923, were received by the Holy Father at the entrance of his private apartments. He shook hands with them, afterward spending some time in private conversation with them, as Cardinal Gasparri also did later. But nothing was done which could in any way compromise the sincerity of their own religion. At the next consistory the Pope, doubtless at the instance of the King, referred to his hopes of peace in Ireland and, on the day of the King's visit, the Osservatore Romano, the Catholic paper in Rome, published inspired articles referring to the work of former British sovereigns, and to the cordial, effective, and respectful relations that had for long existed between the two Powers. The British Empire, said the Osservatore, worked in its civil and political development and its greatness on the seas to ensure that reign of law by which alone could be obtained just liberty of faith and conscience, and in its world-wide range was constantly in contact with the world-wide religion of Rome and with the moral and humanitarian interests which found in the Pope, as the head of the Church, their highest and most august representative; that, as the Pope existed to assert peace and charity between nations

and between individuals and to win them to brotherhood in Christ, so the visit of the King and Queen of England was a pledge that in this work he was assisted by, and was himself assisting, the function of a country which, in the prudence of her sovereigns and the wisdom of her government and the industry of her people, was working to conquer the world for the same ends.

The visit of the King and Queen will remind Americans of the cordiality with which Benedict XV greeted President Wilson as the representative of America's ideals of justice and charity.

The King and Queen of the Belgians had been the first to visit the present Pope. They were received with much the same ceremonies and, in giving the Pope an ivory crucifix, identified their country with the sacrifices already so ably represented by Cardinal Mercier.

When the King of Spain came to visit the Pope, in November 1923, his speech was one of passionate devotion. He came, he said, as the representative of a race that had spread the Faith wherever they had traveled, till now the Spanish world embraced a third of the Catholic religion; he said that they were still lambs when the church bell summoned them to prayer, and lions as the trumpet sounded to battle; that they fought and were always ready to fight to spread justice, culture, civilization in the world; that they would never desert the post of honor assigned to them by their glorious traditions, but were ever ready to do combat 'for the triumph and glory of the Cross, which is not only the banner of the Faith, but the banner of peace and justice, of civilization, and of progress.'

After these words the King knelt at the feet of the Pope, who embraced and kissed him and answered his ringing tones in a voice gentle and benign. He welcomed the King and Queen and was proud to count, in the immense

family which the Blessed God, in the hidden counsels of His mercy, had confided to his heart and care, so noble a knight of God and of the Church, and a people so constant and heroic in the Faith. Since the King had asked that Spain should have a larger representation in the College of Cardinals, the Pope longed to grant his desires; as for the King and his people, for did not the Pope feel that the people of Spain were one with the kingly heart he had embraced?- he wished them all peace and unity, prosperity and glory, blessings which would surely be given and could be obtained only if the Christian religion reigned in the laws and in the schools and gave, both to society and to the family, both to public and private life, its salutary influences of holiness and civilization, of science and art, and of true harmony.

We see here examples of the way the Vatican adjusts its interest with Catholic and with non-Catholic countries. The visits made to the present Pope by the Hereditary Prince of Japan, and Ras Tafari, the Heir and Regent of Ethiopia, with their picturesque ceremonial and their cordial conversations, are dramatic instances of Vatican diplomacy at work in countries which do not claim to be a part of Christendom.

IV

To sum up the Vatican's own account of its work, no words are more important than those of the present Pope in his first encyclical. He had spoken of his confident hope for the reunion of Christendom; and, as a pledge and augury of it, that marvelous circumstance, a surprise to all, and to some perhaps an unpleasing circumstance, but most welcome to him and to his cardinals, 'that in these last times the representatives and rulers of almost all the nations of the world, as

though obedient to a common instinct and desire of union and peace, are returned to this Apostolic See to confirm or renew harmony and friendship with it. In which we rejoice, not alone for the increased prestige of Holy Church, but because it is always more clearly apparent, and becomes the experience of all, how manifold and how great are the beneficial powers that she possesses for the prosperity of human society, even in a civil and earthly way. For if the Church, by the will of God, directly provides the good things of the Spirit and of eternity, yet, by a certain connection of things, she assists the earthly prosperity of individuals and of society even more completely than if these were her direct duty and service.'

How could we explain the exact significance of those words? That in the Holy See there is in the world not only the centralized authority of a unique society, which can enter into relation with Governments to adjust its interest with theirs; there is a central office which exists for the benefit of human society as a whole, providing a means of intercourse for those who cannot or will not carry on direct intercourse with one another. The Vatican is thus a support for diplomacy as a whole. It has had in existence for some centuries just the organization which the ideals of peaceful men founded and aimed at maintaining at Geneva. But while the League of Nations still lacks the support of America, and rejects that of Germany and Russia; while it has become an outpost of French political influence, so that it must carry out the commands of France with regard to determining the division of Upper Silesia, and so that its officials were simply the agents of France in the Saar, and it could make no comment on the advance of the French army into the Ruhr, and must perforce give way to the Council of Ambassadors when

Italy occupied Corfu; when its most eager supporters openly admit that it cannot enforce its decisions in war, nor even exert economic pressure; when, in fact, it is only a means of registering the public opinion of certain countries among which France has so far dominated, the Holy See, wise with the experience of many centuries, firmly fixed on principles of order and justice, bound essentially to the Christian ideals of charity and peace, confident of the inspiration of a divine authority, provides a centre which not only is neutral and universal, but which applies to every question at issue the immemorial principles of justice and the moderation of Christian influence. The Pope did not refuse the suggestions of Britain's representative that he should denounce the occupation of the Ruhr.

But on the other hand, is it not true that the Vatican subjects all questions to clerical intrigue, that it must always regard its own interests, that it has not been neutral in the past? Such contentions dissolve before close acquaintance with the facts. Germans and English each accused Benedict XV of being partial to the other. Both accusations cannot be true: more probably both are false. For neither can point to a single instance, as Germany can point to such obvious ones in the case of the League of Nations. And when we come to the question of Machiavellian cunning in the Papal Curia, what instance of foresight is more dramatic than that of Benedict XV refusing the offer of the Central Powers to install him, if they were victorious, in his temporal dominion? It is now nearly three hundred years since Sir Henry Wotton said that an Ambassador was sent abroad to lie for his country; what if even Papal diplomats use speech to conceal their thoughts? An extraordinary reserve they certainly do employ; but the Governments of the world come to them