VATICAN VOICE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20131, 28 December 1939, Page 7

VATICAN VOICE

; ECHOES ABROAD | ATROCITIES CENSURED I BLOODSTAINED SOIL POLAND AND FINLAND DIVINE VENGEANCE (Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (British Official Wireless.) Reed. 12 noon. RUGBY, Dee. 27. The Pope’s allocution to the College of Cardinals on Christmas Eve receives considerable prominence and appreciative comment in the British press. The Daily Telegraph says: “Many years have passed since there came from the Vatican so stern a censure on the rulers of States and such direct and precise declarations on international policy. The effect on world opinion should be widespread and potent.

“Pius XII strove to the last to preserve peace in Europe against Herr

Hitler’s fu,ry and when Poland lay ravaged he declared his faith in her resurrection and denounced the system of Hitlerism. Now his Christmas allocution opens with condemnation of a ‘series of acts incompatible with international law and natural law and the most, elementary feelings of humanity.’ “The atrocities on the bloodstained soil of Poland and Finland he boldly describes as acts which call for Divine vengeance. | Right to Freedom “The first of the Pope’s five conditions for peace, justice and honour was that peace must assure the right to life and the freedom of all nations great and small and for whatever has been destroyed there must be reparation.” “Thus,” says the Daily Telegraph, “the head of the Roman Catholic Church tells his people in the Reich and others all over Europe and the world that war must go on until atonement is made for the Fuehrer’s crimes against humanity by German recognition of the wrong done In Czechoslovakia, Poland and Finland, and the establishment of their freedom.”

The Daily Telegraph concludes: “There is no substantial difference between the general definition announced by the Allies of the war aimt which must be won and the Pope’s declaration of the condition in which he sees the only possible basis of peace ” Pope and President The Manchester Guardian holds the same view that the Pope’s conditions for a lasting and just peace require freedom for the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Poles, the Finns and the Austrians if it is Iheir wish. The Guardian compares the Pope's allocution with President Roosevelt’s words on his appointment of a personal representative at the Vatican and brings out the important point of the similarity which is expressed in each, namely, that the will to peace must be supported by general agreement on the method for bringing it about. The Guardian concludes: “If by their efforts the Pope and the President can bring earlier that security which we are forced to pursue with arms, the world will have been spared more misery than it now realises.’’