The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1902-04-12
Two Romes, Two Sovereigns, Two Flags and
Two Armies of Occupation
by Rival Rulers
Contrast Between the Enthusiasm of the
Subjects of the Italian King
and Holy Father.

The chief wonder in this city of Won
ders is to see two armies Of occupation,
owning different sovereigns and fight
ing under rival flags. circulating in the
same streets, and day by day carrying
on their smokeless struggle for mas
terry without as much as the noise Of
n cannon shot, writes VIM. O'Briell, NJ.
p, in Il letter from Rome to the Dublin
Irish People.
In the trastevcrd, the heroic old man
Of ninety-three, whose empire is appar-
emily bounded by the walls of the Vat
lean, vet mystically extends to the ut
termost ends of the enrth. Across the
river, only three streets away, although
with an abyss deep as an ocean be-
tween them, the youthful king of the
House Of Savoy, who owes to a mur-
dcrer's knife his untimely accession to
his throne. Both potcntatcs have their
separate embassies their separate no
bility, their separate armies and en-
canpments. The French or Austrian
Minister to the Vatican has hardly n
bowling acquaintance with his brother
French or Austrian Minister to the
Quirinal. The naughty Black Patri-
cians, who adhere to the Pope, would
rather freeze to death in their palaces
than open them to the White Pntri
cinns-tle princely bankers and bank
rupt marquises, flunllcys and adven-
t,lrcrs whose patents of nobility date
from yesterday, and who find them
selves attracted towards the lOnves and
fishes of the Quirinal by the same in
stinct which brings their Irish brother
funkey groveling on his belly to Dub
lin Castle. The trumpcts of the rival
posts are forever sounding-be they
church bells or roll calls. Every big
building which is not convent is Il
barracl, or convent appropriated into
Il barrack. Every street Is alive with
the uniforms of the two armics-the
cOckades and the feathers and swords
of the army Of the flesh flashing in and
out among those monks gnrbs Of
brown and white and black, which are
as incomparably picturesque today rs
when Fra Angelica painted them, or
rubbing shoulders with detachments of
the students of the innumerablc &C.
clesiastical colleges of all nations, who
march about two abreast in soutAncs
and bands of multicolored and uncx-
pectcd lucs, light purple and dark pur-
pie, azure blue and Prussian blue, pink
and scarlet and green-troops of con-
scripts in whose fresh faces and eager
eyes you see valor, purity, and imper-
ishable faith shining steadily out in
the midst of a world of pcssimism and
corruption. Often and desperately as
the possession of Rome has been con-
tested by Volscan and Etruscan, by
Austrian and Frenchman and Span.
lard, there was surely never more
cnthralling passage in it's story than
this silent, bloodless, invisible, subter-
ranean, supernatural warfare which
divides the Eternal City day by day
from the dawn when the sun peeps into
the early Masses on the thousand affairs
of Rome until it sets behind st. Peters
in Il sea of gold.
l saw the hosts Of the House of Sa-
voy mObiliZed in all their fnery the
morning the King went to open his
Parliament. 1 alighted upon the pro-
ccssion in one Of the new streets by
which the conquerors have ripped up
and eviscerated old Rome-streets in
the style Of Chicago dry goods king,
gone bankrupt in the course Of the
building operations. At one extremity
rose the facade of the vast Church of
the Jesu, where the body of st. Ig-
natius Loyola lies in it's urn of gold
and gems, surviving like solemn re-
buke from the past in the midst Of the
shabby magniflcence Of the new sky
scrapers; and on the opposite piazza
the statue Of some fat Parliamentarian
Of the new regime-one of those emf