THE -POPE AND THE TEMPORAL POWER.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Historians will deal—when documents in existence are available for publication—with the cabses operating upon the Vatican during the war, and it is of prinie importance that you have once again reminded the public of the failure of the Pope to support by any practical means the persecuted prelates and priests of martyred Belgium. Clear evidence of outrages was, it is known, submitted to the Vatican by Cardinal Mercier. But we are not ignorant of the-forces playing- a leading role at the Vatican in 1914-18.. Unquestionably Berlin agents had promised that victory for the Hun would be followed by the cession of Jerusalem .and Southern -Palestine, with Jaffa as a port, to- the Pontiff as a gift from. the Sultan. To re-establish the Papal States- in Italy -would • have met with national opposition, whereas the ownership of the Holy Places by the Pope would have satisfied the IT1tramontanists as an instalment.—I am,
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