File No. 763.72119/872
The Chargé in Switzerland ( Wilson ) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 3, 1.45 a.m.]
1782. Translation of Turkish reply to Pope’s peace proposal follows:
It is with a feeling of high consideration and profound sympathy that we have become acquainted with the moving appeal that Your Holiness addressed to us as well as to the chiefs of the other belligerent states in the noble intention of putting an end to the present war, the most terrible that the world has ever lived through, and thus bringing back peace and harmony among the peoples. The high thoughts that spring from Your Holiness’s declarations as well as the sentiments of great love which animate Your Holiness towards suffering and distracted humanity and the loyal pleas have profoundly touched us.
The cordial [and loyal exhortations which the] Holy See has renewed up to now with an undoubted impartiality to put an end to the cruel struggle which for more than three years ravaged the most precious strength of so many peoples have found us even the better disposed in that our Government, as it has always had the courage to announce, does not seek any unjust object neither in the political domain nor in the economic domain. We have been forced to fight for the maintenance of our existence and of our independence as well as for the free development of our country.
This object, absolutely justified, which consists essentially in the guaranteeing of the rights of our entire and limitless sovereignty over all the territory of our national frontiers—that is what we are aiming for to-day. We have been animated unceasingly with the desire to assure to our country the benefits of a just and durable peace and as always in accord with the will of our people we have desired the progress and welfare of our Empire in all directions in complete harmony with the other states. Penetrated with these sentiments and with the knowledge of our duties towards the All Powerful and humanity we have in accord with our allies during the month of December of last year proposed to our adversaries to enter into negotiations for a just and durable peace. Although we have made known several times since our intentions in this sense, those intentions meet with no echo. The proposition of Your Holiness which tends essentially to create a peace established upon rational basis, a durable peace such as we have always dreamed of, can therefore only meet with our approbation.
Your Holiness announces that the future organization of the world must be founded on the exclusion of arms, on the moral force of right, on the triumph of justice, on international justice and equity. The realization of this so noble idea, which would have as a direct result the assured right and real equality without differences of all states in the measure that they are members of the international [Page 222] community, seems to us the only means of preserving the universe from future catastrophes and to avoid conflicts between nations which are the cause of suffering and desolation.
Like Your Holiness, we think that to reach this humanitarian object all future negotiations ought to be directed to finding the most practical means and the most efficacious means for bringing about a reciprocal and progressive limitation of armaments on sea, on land, and in the air, and thus to put to the development of progress and civilization and of happiness of humanity all the riches and resources of all the peoples. But these negotiations, as Your Holiness says, ought to regulate in an equitable manner the question of the freedom of the seas which is [for] the common good of all peoples and should definitely abolish for the future all ideas of hegemony.
The proposition of Your Holiness to submit international conflicts to an obligatory arbitration seems to us also of a great importance.
Penetrated by the grandeur of this idea and by the beneficial results that it can have we do not hesitate an instant in declaring that we are ready to discuss at the moment negotiations of peace and means capable of calming international conflicts taking into consideration the guarantees which belong to sovereign existence and to the free development of peoples.
It is thus that we believe that the proposal of Your Holiness contains ideas capable of calming the present conflicts and of bringing about a general and durable peace.
We are also convinced that if our enemies are from to-day animated with the same thoughts and the same sentiments which are in harmony with the justified objects mentioned above, nothing would longer oppose the opening of peace negotiations as Your Holiness desires it in the nobleness of your heart.
May the All Powerful always guard Your Holiness in the nobleness of your heart, may the All Powerful guard Your Holiness unceasingly under its divine protection!