FRENCH VIEW OF PEACE.

Hokitika Guardian, 24 October 1918, Page 1

FRENCH VIEW OF PEACE.

A great Roman Catholic Church orator, the Abbe Sertillanges, a prolessor at the Catholic Institute in Paris, has recently delivered ail address on the Pope’s appeal for peace. In his audience there were a large number of Ro-

man Catholic bishops. There was an air of respectful, reserve on the part of the speaker and in the audience. A petition to the Pope was drawn up and presented for the acceptance ol the meeting. It shows the .feelings of Frenchmen who are at once loyal both to France and to the Pope. It reads as follows:

••Most Holy Father, —We cannot at present entertain your appeal for peace. Wo are your sons and we know that you are no respecter of persons; and if indeed you did make a distinction between your children, you would not put France in the last ranks. “We confess that to prolong this war for a single hour would he a crime, if there were any possibility of stopping it by a reliable treaty. But, Most Holy

Father, consider our case. An atrocious aggression came to us from the false security in which we lived and dreamt. We thought, hut of peace. If we have any responsibility in this war, it is because we loved too indolently that peace which preoccupied us. Now here is our country, half crushed, our industries ruined, our famines to a great extent decimated. We can expect in the future, unless peace comes with compensation, nothing hut ruin and slavery, and that after prodigies of valour have been accomplished. “Our enemies have remained powerful ; the invasion did not touch them; your serious reproofs did not make make them give up the anti-Christian principles which guide them. . . . An armed peace would he for all but a continuation of quarrels and insecurity. “Try to convert. Most Holy Father, those whom President Wilson lias given up in despair. For the present we are obliged to remember that they have not repented, and that they offer no reparation ; rather that they are planning other crimes; that they commit new ones every day. Their conduct is that of implacable conquerors, who desire for themselves, the world. “We will ask for three tilings:— Firstly, for reparation so that it cannot he said that crime is profitable; secondly, for restitution, so as to ho able to extend justice to all ; and thirdly for guarantees, so that your fraternal views which are ours also, can ho established. A Christian Europe should no longer live under a law of iron, but a law of love; that law which you preach to us. Most Holy Father. We feel that our mission is similar to your own.”