BOOKS.
THE PAPACY AND THE WAR.*
DANIEL interpreted the word " Tekel," in the writing on the wall that alarmed Belshazzar, as " Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting." Mr. Champneys applies the phrase to the Papacy in a temperately written essay on the conduct of the Vatican during the war. The author, in common with many other moderate men, has been profoundly distressed by the seeming indifference of the Papacy to the war crimes of the Germans and .Austrians. Although a Protestant, he was evidently anxious to be assured that the head of the Roman Catholic Church could agree with him in detesting evil deeds that must be repugnant to every true Christian. The German troops in Belgium deliberately slaughtered innocent civilians, including many priests ; they assaulted women and children, not even respecting the nuns in the convents ; they set on fire numerous towns and villages, solely for the purpose of striking terror into the Belgian population ; they killed our wounded and they maltreated prisoners. All these things were done in the first few weeks of the war, and, as the:struggle continued, the Germans went from bad to worse. The facts are well known ; the Germans have not.denied them, though they have occasion- ally sought to justify or excuse their foul deeds. Many Pro- testants, as well as Roman Catholics, instinctively looked to the Papacy as a Christian institution for a stem condemnation of these horrors. British Protestants did not want the Papacy to side with the Allies, but they hoped, for the sake of our common Christianity, that the Papacy would tell its German and Austrian friends to fight fairly. Papal remonstrances, clearly expressed, at the outset of ,the war might have induced the Germans to drop their barbarous methods, and might have lessened the, terrible aftermath of bitter illwill against Germany which the war has left among all decent people. The Papacy threw away its great opportunity of promoting Christian union and took refuge in silence or in equivocal utterances which, by suggesting that all the belligerents were equally to blame, helped the enemy propaganda. It had been weighed and found wanting.
Such, in brief, is Mr. Champneya's argument, which he has fortified by many precise citations from documents. He is careful to state that the Pope used his influence to secure better treatment for prisoners, and that he contributed to funds for the relief of the poor in Belgium and Poland. 'Mr. Champneys quotes Father Brennan's semi-official defence of the Papacy for the assertion that the Pope privately asked Germany to abandon the ' '-boat campaign against merchantmen. The Pope invited the Austrians not to drop bombs on open towns or churches, but he showed no concern when they disregarded his request. He persuaded Bavaria to release some of the unhappy Belgians who were deported and forced to work as slaves in the mines and factories ; but he did not become indignant when the deportations were continued and women and girls were subjected to the foulest treatment in their captivity. The Pope n January, 1915, proclaimed that " for no one IS it lawful, on any plea whatever, to violate justice." In December, 1916, he went so far as to " deplore this accumulation of evils and again condemn the injustices of this war wherever and by whomsoever they are perpetrated." He pleaded that he did not know the facts. Moreover, as Cardinal Gasparri told the Archbishop of • Telud . the Papacy and the War. By A. C. Champneys. London : Bell. 1 8. ed. net.) Cologne in 1918, " the Holy Father strives to preserve the world from the sorry spectacle of disputes and dissensions between members of the Catholic Hierarchy." It was this Archbishop who persuaded the Pope to obtain for Cologne immunity from Allied air raids on Corpus Christi Day—in return for which the Germans took particular pains to bombard Paris on that very day from " Big Bertha " and also to make an air raid upon London. " Certainly," says Mr. Champneys, " the. Pope has in practice been a valuable ally to the Germans and their allies." The Papal peace proposals of. August 1st, 1917, were, as we now know from Count Czernin, Herr Erzherger, and others, intended to help the Central Powers in their diplomacy by taking advan- tage of the supposed weariness of the Allies. It was through no accident that the Papal generalities followed so closely upon the so-called peace resolution of the Reichstag, which its authors admit to have been a mere trick. The Papal demand for " entire and reciprocal condonation," for " the true freedom and common use of the sea," and so forth coincided so closely with the German ideas of a satisfactory peace that it might have been written at Berlin. Mr. Champneys points out that the Papal message acted as a tonic on the German people, while it gave rise to discouragement in Italy, and possibly helped to demoralize the Italian troops at Caporetto, although we must add that bad generalship was the main cause of that unhappy reverse.
Mr. Champneys draws from this painful story the inference that the Papacy has not the " gift of truth and faith that never fails " :—
" Plainly, the Pope has no such special gift. His oppor- tunism, as if God could not manage the government of the world unless His own moral laws were disregarded, shows a want of personal faith, and refutes the theory that God had granted ' a gift of truth and faith that never fails ' to all Popes, ' for the salvation of all men.' And it is quite clear that both his failure plainly to condemn atrocious crimes and his attempt to establish a peace 'without the punishment of the criminals and without full reparation on their part (since he recommends• ' reciprocal condonation ') tended dangerously to lower the standard of morals. If his efforts had been successful, and the Allies had agreed to leave the Germans unbeaten and unpunished, retaining much of their ill-gotten gains and their prestige, the result -must have been disastrous both to religion and to morals. In religion it must have been the fixing upon Germany of a belief in a ' tribal' non-moral deity—the God of Jephthah at best, not the God of Abraham, much less the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ— for those who continued to believe in any deity. To the rest of the world it would have been very hard to believe in a God at all,.since He had so plainly failed to defend the right, ' His own cause' ; as the repentant German officer said, ' Either God is dead, or Germany is doomed.' As regards morals, there would have been that lowering of the standard generally which must have resulted from the contemplation of one monstrous iniquity piled upon another till it was hard any longer to be surprised or shocked at any vileness of which Germans might be guilty— demoralisation which only the plain condemnation and the evident failure and punishment of the perpetrators could even partially undo. But, besides this, two principles would naturally be deduced from the Pope's inaction and his action alike— (1) that it is no unpardonable crime if a nation breaks its solemn engagements as soon as they become inconvenient; (2) that the vilest and most atrocious acts done in war are more or less natural and to be condoned—as the German soldier wrote in his diary : Ja, Ja, c'est la guerre.' . . . For the faith and morals of the world have been saved, not by the Pope, but in spite of him. He has not ' strengthened his brethren ' in the fight for righteousness ; and our Lord's words to St. Peter cannot have had the meaning which Papalists give them, and on which Papalism depends. Not in any small matter, •but in a great day of the Lord,' in a crisis which must affect religien and morals, for good or for evil, for generations, God's Provi- dence has not used the Papacy to maintain the right. The Pope, like some ordinary man of bad judgment and weak character, has, on the whole, helped the wrong side."
All that we need say is that the war has revealed once again the fatal dualism of the Papacy, which seeks to be a political power as well as a religious force, and that the two aims eau be recon- ciled less and less satisfactorily as the world grows older. Man- kind needs more than ever the help that religion can give, but it does not want political religion or religious politics. The attempt of the Papacy to be neutral in a world-war that raised the gravest moral issues was fundamentally mistaken.
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