File No. 763.72119/870
The Chargé in Switzerland (Wilson) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 2, 11.55 a.m.]
1769. Department’s 974, September 28.1 German note follows in translation:
Your Eminence has had the kindness to transmit to His Majesty the Emperor and King, my August Master, by letter dated August 2 of the past month a manifest of His Holiness the Pope wherein His Holiness filled with affliction in view of the horrors of the World War addresses a pressing appeal in favor of peace to the chiefs of state of the belligerents. His Majesty the Emperor and King has deigned to make me acquainted with Your Eminence’s letter and has charged me to respond to it.
For some time His Majesty has followed with great respect and sincere gratitude the efforts of His Holiness to alleviate if possible in a spirit of true impartiality the evils of the war and to accelerate the end of hostilities. The Emperor sees in this last step of His Holiness a new proof of high and humanitarian inspiration and desires eagerly that for the good of the whole world the appeal of the Pope may find favor.
The efforts of Pope Benedict XV to bring about an accord between the peoples could expect a sympathetic welcome and thoroughgoing aid from His Majesty, the more so as the Emperor since he has led the Government has considered that his principal and sacred duty is to assure to the German people and to the world the benefits of peace. In his first discourse from the throne at the opening of the Reichstag on June 25, 1888, the Emperor swore that his love for the German Army and his position in regard to it would never lead him into the temptation of taking away from the country the blessings [Page 218] of peace unless the war was a necessity brought about by an attack against the Empire or against its allies.
The German Army, he said, must assure us peace and, if in spite of all peace should be broken, the Army must be in a state to permit us to reestablish peace with honor.
The Emperor during 26 years of a prosperous Government has confirmed by fact in spite of provocations and temptations the wishes which he made, then also during the crisis which brought about the present world conflagration the efforts of His Majesty were active up to the last moment to prevent the conflict by pacific means.
When the war broke out against his desire and against his will the Emperor in accord with His Holiness always was the first to declare solemnly that he was ready to enter into peace negotiations. Behind His Majesty stood the German people with the will to collaborate for peace. Germany searched within the limits of the national frontiers for free development in its material and intellectual welfare and outside of the territory of the Empire the right to competition without hindrance with nations equal in rights and equally respected. The free play of forces struggling peacefully together in the world would have brought to the highest perfection the most noble welfare of humanity. A fatal combination of circumstances suddenly interrupted since 1914 a development full of promise and has transformed Europe into a field of battle.
Appreciating the importance of the manifest of the Holy Father the Imperial Government has not failed to examine seriously and properly the propositions which are contained therein. The particular measures which he has adopted in intimate accord with the representatives of the German people for the questions to be raised prove how much he has at heart and accord with the desires of His Holiness as well as with the manifestation of peace of the Reichstag of July 19 of this year in searching for a basis which can be useful for a just and durable peace.
The Imperial Government greets with a particular sympathy the master thought of the call to peace where His Holiness expresses clearly his conviction that in the future the material forces of arms must be replaced by the moral force of right.
We are also persuaded that the sick body of human society can only be cured by the regeneration of the moral force of right. The consequence of this in accordance with the belief of His Holiness would be a simultaneous limitation of military forces of all states and the organization of an arbitral system which would be obligatory for international disputes.
We share the views of His Holiness that precise rules and certain assurances for a simultaneous and mutual limitation of armament on land, on sea, and in the air as well as for the true freedom and community of ownership of the seas constitute the objects the discussion of which ought to develop a new spirit which would direct the relations of states in the future. Evidently then the duty of arranging international differences of opinion would result no longer by the force of arms but by a pacific process, principally by arbitration, the efficacy of which we fully recognize in the maintenance of peace. The Imperial Government will sustain therefore any proposition to this end compatible with the vital interests of the Empire [Page 219] and the German people. By the geographic position and by the economic needs Germany is dependent upon peaceful relations with its neighbors and with far distant countries. Therefore no people more than the German people have more reason to desire that a spirit of conciliation and fraternity between the nations should succeed to the hatred and struggle.
When peoples inspired by this spirit will have recognized for their common welfare that union is preferable to division in their relations they will be able to regulate the different questions remaining in discussion in a manner to create for each people satisfactory conditions of existence and to render impossible a return of the great universal catastrophe. It is only in the foregoing conditions that a durable peace can be founded which can add [aid?] the spirit of the intellectual rapprochement and the economic rehabilitation of human society.
This firm and sincere conviction awakens among us the recognition that our adversaries as well will find in the ideas proposed by His Holiness a basis on which can be prepared the paths for a future peace in conditions in harmony with the spirit of equity and with the situation of Europe. Signature of Chancellor of Empire.
Translation Austrian response follows:
Holy Father, it is with profound respect and sincere emotion that [we] have become acquainted with the new step undertaken by Your Holiness fulfilling the sacred charge which God has confided to you which you have made to us and to the leaders of the other belligerent states in the noble intention of bringing the peoples hard tried to an understanding which can bring peace again to them. We have welcomed with grateful heart this new proof of your paternal solicitude that you, Holy Father, have always shown to all peoples without distinction, and we have greeted from the bottom of our souls the moving appeal that Your Holiness has caused to be addressed to the governments of the belligerent peoples.
During this cruel war we have always looked on Your Holiness as the highest personality who, thanks to your mission which passes the affairs of this world and thanks to the high conception of duties which have been confided to you, soars above the belligerent peoples and who, sheltered from all influence, might try to find a possible way of realizing our own desire of bringing back a durable peace and one which is honorable for all peoples. Since we have mounted the throne of our ancestors fully recognizing the responsibility which falls upon us before God and men for the future of Austro-Hungarian dynasty which has been confided to us, we have never lost from sight the high object of making our peoples as soon as possible enjoy again the benefits of peace.
A little after our assumption of power it was confided to us in common with our allies to undertake a step conceived and prepared by our illustrious predecessor, the former Emperor and King, Franz Josef I, in favor of an honorable and durable peace.
In our speech from the throne delivered at the reassembly of the Austrian Imperial Council we have expressed this same desire and declared that we sought a peace which liberates the people in the [Page 220] future from hatred and thirst for vengeance and which assures them for numerous generations from all appeal to armed force.
Since that time our common Government has not failed by reiterated and persuasive declarations that all the world could hear to express our desire and the desire of the people of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to put an end to the flow of blood by a peace similar to that which Your Holiness proposes.
Happy to think that the wishes which have been ours since the beginning are turned towards the same object that Your Holiness to-day indicates to us, we have submitted to a careful examination the concrete and practical suggestions that Your Holiness has recently made to us, and we have arrived at the following conclusions regarding them.
With the strength of a deeply rooted conviction we greet the master thought of Your Holiness that the future organization of the world ought to be based on the suppression of armed force, on the moral force of right, on the supremacy of international justice and equity. We hope also, and we are persuaded, that the recognition of the knowledge of right will morally regenerate humanity. We share therefore the conception of Your Holiness that negotiations of the belligerents should and can lead £6 an understanding as to how, after establishment of satisfactory guarantees, armament on land, on water, and in the air shall be simultaneously, mutually, and successively fixed or limited and as to how the high seas, belonging by right to all peoples, shall be freed from the domination or supremacy of a single nation and be opened to the equal use of all.
Fully recognizing the importance for the establishment of peace of the means proposed by Your Holiness to submit the international difficulties to obligatory tribunal of arbitration, we are ready to enter into negotiations also on this proposition of Your Holiness. If, as we desire with all our heart, one could succeed in reaching an agreement which realizes these sublime ideas and thus guarantees to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy an unrestricted development in the future, then it will not be more difficult in a spirit of equity and realizing the mutual necessities of existence to reach a solution of the other questions which must be solved between the belligerents.
If in accordance with the proposal of Your Holiness the people of the earth enter peacefully into negotiations one with another, then a durable peace can be born therefrom. They can have the complete freedom of the high seas, they can free themselves from the heavy material burden, and new springs of prosperity can be opened to them.
Inspired by sentiments of moderation and reconciliation we see in the proposals made by Your Holiness bases to begin negotiations for the establishment of a peace just for all and which will endure, and we eagerly desire that our enemies of to-day they also should be animated with the same ideas. To this end we pray the All Powerful that He will bless the work of peace prepared by Your Holiness.
We have the honor to sign ourselves the obedient son of Your Holiness. Charles.
- Telegram reads: “Telegraph full text Germany’s and Austria’s replies to Vatican peace proposal if available.” (File No. 763.72119/866a.)↩