No doubt the late Pope was intent upon creating as
early as possible in the War an atmosphere of peace, and he may well have told himself that violently to estrange either side would be to make that atmosphere impossible. Moreover, he had, of course, to maintain relations with his Austrian and Southern German flocks, and he may have believed that to make anti-German political announcements would be to shatter his religious useful- ness. We all recognize the difficult position in which he was placed. Yet Englishmen hoped against hope that the high moral sense of the Pope would become to him the strongest of all laws, that it would override all expediency, and that he would at last denounce the most obvious German crimes against the public conscience. So far as he could act humanely without giving political offence the Pope, of -course, never failed. It is a pleasure to recall the appreciation which both sides felt for his labours in the interests of prisoners of war.
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