IN the United States Senate the other day Senator Turner of Washington, standing in his place, “charged that the delay [in sending the President’s Message] last week was not due to the request of General Lee; but to the fact that Archbishop Ireland had cabled to the Vatican in the hope that the holy father might be able to bring about a peaceful solution of the difficulty. The President was waiting upon the pope to secure that which American diplomacy had failed to obtain.”
That a United States senator, speaking upon a question so grave as to be known by all to involve war between nations, would say such a thing as this at random is not to be believed.
The truth of the charge is favored by the fact that though the message was withheld professedly because the publication of it that day “would endanger the lives of American citizens in Cuba,” yet when it was made public, unaltered, a week later, there was not in it a single sentence that could by any conceivable construction stir up any spirit that would in any way endanger the life of any American citizen. The World has asked the President or anybody to point out in that message any single sentence that would have endangered the lives of Americans in Cuba had it been published the day it was promised, and Congress and the country sat in suspense waiting for it.
Another pointer in favor of Senator Turner’s charge is the statement of the Washington correspondent of the Chicago Times-Herald, April 14, that “Archbishop Ireland was again active to-day in the cause of peace, rushing from one embassy to another and form legation to legation, spending much time at the French minister’s house, and an hour with the envoy of Austria-Hungary, in one last effort to preserve peace.”
It is will known that no effort has been made by either the pope or Archbishop Ireland to secure peace between Spain and the Cubans; and also that there would be no such effort now were it not for the strong prospect of Cuba being lost to Spain. Under Spanish rule the church of Rome has governmental support and a practical monopoly in Cuba. The moment Cuba is lost to Spain, and is free,—that moment Rome finds her governmental power there vanished.
This is not peace for the sake of peace, but peace for the sake of power and revenue, that Archbishop Ireland and the pope are so busily working for just now as Cuba is about to be free. And that through the President, Archbishop Ireland and the pope should in such a cause, or any other, be able to play pitch and toss, and peek-a-boo with the Congress and people of the United States, is sufficiently suggestive to cause the American people seriously to think.
It can be remembered also in this connection that Archbishop Ireland dictated to the St. Louis Convention.
A. T. J.