763.72119/558½
The Ambassador in Italy (Page) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 7.]
My Dear Mr. Secretary: I am going to ask that you deliver this personally to the President.
A matter that has interested me greatly of late is the secret work of the Vatican relative to us and to the European belligerents. I have from time to time sent you telegrams referring to what has been going on as far as it has been brought to my notice. You will find from my telegram no. 80073 and those following, that a gentleman came to me from the Vatican, that is from the Cardinal Secretary of State, Gasparri, with a suggestion of a way for the President to stop the war immediately by preventing the exportation of munitions of war and other supplies to any of the belligerents. It was full of praise of the President’s fine idealism. When it was suggested by the gentleman who came to me that this might be regarded as an unfriendly act by the Allies, the reply was that we were always having questions arise between us and Japan, and that Governments could always arrange such matters, and we could make it appear that we [Page 761] thought it necessary in view of all this to reserve our products for ourselves.
Soon after that, the same gentleman came again, having been sent for to [sic] the Vatican, and presented the same ideas, rather more urgently and with rather less praise for the President. And this time it referred to our difficulties with Mexico as well as with Japan, and spoke of us in rather more positive terms.
The next time an actual message was written out, but not signed, for me to send to the President. I, however, declined to send such a message from the Vatican directly to our Government, but I later sent you for your information the substance of what had been told me.
Now again has come another, which my informant spoke of as another “Delenda est Carthago”. It declares that
“in well-balanced political circles of this Capital the following considerations are advanced:
“The position of President Wilson relative to the belligerent powers is not sustained from the point of view of International Law. It would have been much more logical and magnificently fine if he had really vindicated complete freedom of the seas, or the right of American citizens to trade with both groups of belligerents, carrying them not contraband of war but those products which on the basis of the Hague Conference do not constitute contraband of war. In this case the action of President Wilson would have been consonant with International Law, and he would have been followed by all the neutrals, and his figure in the history of the world would have towered gigantically.
“But now his position is not logical, because on one hand he says that he defends freedom of the seas while in reality he not only does not defend it, but yields to England’s injunctions not to navigate to the Central Empires; therefore in reality he is not neutral.”
You will observe the entirely different tone of this from former communications. At the same time there has appeared in a Jesuit journal published in Florence, a long article, signed “Catholicus,” on the neutrality of the Pope, in which the Pope is declared to be the only true neutral, and that there is a manifest desire to abase his neutrality to the level of a cleverly calculated policy of interest,—to that indeed of many neutral states—“as to cite a classical example of selfishness, the United States who, have used their vaunted neutrality to gain millions and billions to the rhythmic beat of preparing ammunition which were used to scatter broadcast death and destruction throughout Europe—the sort of neutrality which no one has forbidden, no one has spoken against, and against whose base bargaining no one has lifted his voice in protest.”
This and more is contained in this article, which is evidently intended to help secure for His Holiness that which is the prime wish [Page 762] of the Vatican—the internationalization of the law of guarantee which at present is the work of Italy alone, and as a first step towards this a seat in the peace congress when it shall assemble.
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I am [etc.]