with Consul-General Montlong and Baron de Vaux. Of the staff of the French Legation at Berne may be mentioned Count de Châteauneuf, who, by all accounts, acted entirely on his own initiative and was not taken seriously. Such persons as Casella (the correspondent of the Matin) and Svatkovsky also were concerned in these matters on various occasions. An active part was taken in this respect by Parodi, who was then the confidant of Sir Horace Rumbold and who is now in the Secretariat of the League of Nations. Then there was a group of international pacifists, such as Professor Herron, Lammasch, and others.
(33) Mrs. Barton, a prominent Englishwoman resident in Switzerland, and a relative of Earl Balfour and Lord Robert Cecil. During the war she was in continual touch with Allied official circles.
(34) In fairness it should here be pointed out that in his consistorial pronouncement of January 22, 1915, Benedict did express his disapproval of the injustice perpetrated in the war. He then caused a confidential statement to be conveyed to the Belgian Government, indicating that though he had formulated his point of view in general terms, he had in mind the invasion of Belgium.
(35) “Aux Chefs des peuples belligérants.”
(36) These three points in the Pope’s note had already been emphasized in various forms in all Wilson’s notes on the subject of peace aims, and both sides therefore regarded them as proposals acceptable to all, especially as they were expressed in such general and vague terms. On all the other points there was a fundamental divergency.
(37) The decree was published in the Press on the day after the first meeting between General Smuts and Count Mensdorff-Pouilly.
(38) For the same reasons, as we shall see later, it was my particular care that when our movement was recognized by Great Britain in August 1918, this uniformity of all our military forces should be expressly emphasized.
(39) At that time Wilson had no official knowledge of the London Pact.
(40) In his speech on October 24, 1917, just before the serious reverse at Caporetta, Sonnino was still unable to say anything final and decisive on this subject. He continued to express himself vaguely on fundamental questions, saying, for example, that Italy was not concerned with dividing up the Habsburg Empire.
(41) When the first reports on the establishment of our army in France reached Rome, Deputy F. Arca made a speech in the Italian Parliament on our revolutionary movement and demanded that it should be supported as resolutely in Italy as in France. Qualtiarotti, the vice-president of the Chamber, associated himself with Arca’s speech and sent me also a congratulatory telegram to Paris.
(42) By the terms of the statutes which had been signed, neither the French Government nor the High Command had the right to settle the matter without our consent.
(43) The text of this official report runs as follows: “La commission des affaires extérieures, après avoir examiné les documents et recueilli les témoignages relatifs aux conversations de paix engagées et poursuivies par l’Autriche-Hongrie en 1917 et 1918, constate que ces conversations n’ont offert, à aucun moment, l’occasion d’une paix acceptable pour la France et pour ses Alliés.”
(44) The question of a joint declaration by the Allies in favour of the oppressed peoples had at this moment made such progress in Paris, where