10 JANUARY 1936, Page 3

The Pope and Peace It is difficult to take exception

to Dr. S. M. Berry's trenchant words on the refusal of the Pope to put himself at the head of a great Christian appeal for peace. He had a great opportunity. He would have been accorded an acknowledged primacy. He would not have been asked to make any specific reference to the war now in progress. That the head of the Roman Catholic Church could be reluctant to identify himself with the claims for the Kingdom of God so admirably expressed in the letter of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York read in most Anglican churches last Sunday is hardly to be conceived. Yet at a moment when an attempt was being made to unite the Christians of the world. in the proclamation of a fundamental Christian doctrine—the doctrine of universal- ism as opposed to particularism—the head of the Church which beyond all others claims to be universal keeps silence. It is, of course, his right. But it will not enhance the world's regard for the Roman Catholic Church or His Holiness himself.