The Pope's Declaration The text of the Pope's address to
the Catholic Nurses' Congress on the Italian crisis was available a week ago only in inadequate, and in some respects misleading, summaries. A study of the actual words used by the Pope shows that, balanced and guarded though his utterance was, His Holiness went fully as far as an Italian Pope, surrounded by Italian Cardinals, could reasonably be asked to go. " A war of sheer conquest and nothing else," he declared categorically, " would be an unjust war, a thing sad and horrible beyond expression." The Italian claim that the conflict, if it came, would be a war of defence and necessary expansion was met by the comment that though the need for expansion must be seriously considered " the right of defence has limits which cannot be ignored without. culpability." It is'obvious that a war undertaken by Italy in Abyssinia under present conditions would fall inevitably within the terms of the Pope's condemnation. That no doubt was why only truncated versions of his address were allowed publication. in the Italian Press.
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