hing
more be done than that? Oh!--in the general issue of the war, if you
want a judgement on the war as a whole, how is it possible that the
Vatican to decide? Surely the French know that excellent principle of
justice, _Audiatur et altera pars_, and how under existing circumstances
can the Vatican do that...? The Vatican is cut off from communication
with Austria and Germany. The Vatican has been deprived of its temporal
power and local independence (another neat point)....

So France is bowed out. When peace is restored, the Vatican will perhaps
be able to enquire if there was a big German army in 1914, if German
diplomacy was aggressive from 1875 onward, if Belgium was invaded
unrighteously, if (Catholic) Austria forced the pace upon (non-Catholic)
Russia. But now--now the Holy See must remain as impartial as an
unbought mascot in a shop window....

The next column of _Le Journal_ contained an account of the Armenian
massacres; the blood of the Armenian cries out past the Holy Father to
heaven; but then Armenians are after all heretics, and here again the
principle of _Audiatur et altera pars_ comes in. Communications are not
open with the Turks. Moreover, Armenians, like Serbs, are worse than
infidels; they are heretics. Perhaps God is punishing them....

_Audiatur et altera pars_, and the Vatican has not forgotten the
infidelity and disrespect of both France and Italy in the past. These
are the things, it seems, that really matter to the Vatican. Cardinal
Gasparri's portrait, in the same issue of _Le Journal_, displays a
countenance of serene contentment, a sort of incarnate "Told-you-so."

So the Vatican lifts its pontifical skirts and shakes the dust of
western Europe off its feet.

It is the most astounding renunciation in history.

Indubitably the Christian church took a wide stride from the kingship of
God when it placed a golden throne for the unbaptised Constantine in
the midst of its most sacred deliberations at Nicaea. But it seems to
me that this abandonment of moral judgements in the present case by the
Holy See is an almost wider step from the church's allegiance to God....

3

Thought about the great questions of life, thought and reasoned
direction, this is what the multitude demands mutely and weakly, and
what the organised churches are failing to give. They have not the
courage of their creeds. Either their creeds are intellectual flummery
or they are the solution to the riddles with whi