The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1915-01-23
The IDEAL ARBITRATOR
NoN-cATHOLlcs ADMIT THE I'm.
FLUENcE OF THE VATICAN
FOR PEACE.

/ We find in the New York Evening
Post, says the Monitor" OF New Jer-
sey, an interesting article entitled
Influence OF the Vatican for Peace"
in which the role Of Benedict XIV as
peace is described. Never in
modern times has the Successor of ST..
Peter faced d condition of things such
as exists at the present moment.
Two-thirds OF the habitahle world is
involved in war. Millions on land and
I sea are engaged in wholesale killing.
Each day the holocaust to Mars grows
greater and greater. Battles, lasting
4 not for days but for weeks and
months, are heaping the plains of
Europe with the dead. 1t is a state
of things that fills all men with a
sense of horror Plus X, before he
closed his earthly career, witnessed
the preliminaries of the World-tragedy,
and the sight hastened his death.
His successor in the Chair Of Peter
took up the heavy burden Of his ex-
allied office amidst the roar of cannon
announcing that millions of his spirit
ual children were at death-grips. His
first thought was to do all that lay in
his power to put a stop to the carnage
that is an impeachment of our much
boasted civilization.
AS Father of Christendom, he APP
pealed to the rulers of the warning
nations in these terms: Hasten,
therefore, to enter into a council of
peace. Grasp the right hand of
friendship, and receive special re-
ward from God for yourselves and
your nations and earn the greatest
praise from the brotherhood Of man. >
II the Kaiser, the Emperor of Austria,
the GAR the King of England and the
President of France would enter into
! peace negotiations i'll the spirit that
, breathes through the invitation ten
dered them by Benedict XIV, there
would be good grounds for hoping
that before the new year is much
older, the last gun i'll the greatest of
wars would have been fired.
But accursed greed stands in the
: : way. The lust for trade and territory
keeps the cannons at their deadly
work. The Holy Father in his first
Encyclical thus referred to the effect
of this lust in the way of destroying
the spirit of brotherhood
"The Spirit of Christ does not reign
today. The people talk today of
brotherhood more than they ever have
before, yet brotherhood is ignored to-
day to a degree greater than ever be-
fore. Nations, races, cities and in
dividuals are divided today by a ran
cor and selfshness more than they
are by political frontiers" We have
here faithful description Of the real
cause of the present deplorable con-
dition of things. 1t is an all sufficient
explanation of the armed struggle
that is deluging great part Of Europe
in blood.
The civilized world for many years
has given itself over to materialism.
: The ideal it has placed before it has
been the qualification Of the senses at
the sacrifice Ciscverything else. Now,
the possession of money is regarded
as the indispensable prerequisite for
the attainment Of this sordid ideal.
. that will fill the Golfers of the nation
that succeeds in getting possession of
, the markets OF the world by any and
every means. What matters it if
thousands OF precious lives are sacri-
feed in war waged for the capture
of markets that will bestow untold
e wealth upon the nation that will con-
: troll them. A recent editorial in the
a New York Evening Sun stated the case
4 with brutal franlness, when, in re-
y ferring to the prolongation Of the pres
e ent war, it declared:
:. War, on the other hand, means the
/, further extension of the time when
t German shipping is excluded from the
: sea. Every casualty list of the
i Kaiser's army is a victory for British
$ industry, for the dead and wounded
: in increasing numbers represent the
i highly trained industrial army which
d has challenged British industrial SUI
J. premacy successfully. More and more
the pressure of French, Russian, Bel
e gian armies will draw German me
e chanics, skilled iaborers, into the
e ranks, while German factories must
shut down. Meantime British fac
tories go on, British ships sail the
seas, British trade gains time to sup
p plant German in the markets of The
4 world Certainly England has no rea
son to pause now that she did mo-
have in the far-off Napoleonic says
when she fought for more than de
cade'
We have here in nutshell the
s. cause of the bloodshed at which thu
N world stands aghast Never was there
lie time when there was more urgen
S, need for influences, other than thu
lie sordid ones that have been hitherto
e. shaping European affairs, asserting
Of themselves in world-politics. Look il
what quarter we may. we can find NJ
n better and more authoritative repre-
is sentative of these influences than h,
s. who sits in the Chair of Peter III
p would be an ideal arbitrator between
t. the warning nations, whose decision
would carry with it far more weigh
than would be accorded to any jude
ment rendered by Hague Peace Con
n ference. This is not the opinion o
I Catholics alone. 1t is shared by man
Protestants, as is shown by the CON
munication sent to the Christian Con
y monwealth, London, by the Rev. r. J