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The Guild of the Pope’s Peace: A British Peace Movement in the First World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2015

Youssef Taouk
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A little over two weeks after the commencement of the First World War, the Catholic Church was left without its universal shepherd at a time of immense upheaval. Pope Pius X died on 20 August 1914 and immediately, the cardinals of the Catholic Church made their way to Rome to elect his successor. In the conclave, the choice fell on Giacomo della Chiesa, Cardinal Archbishop of Bologna, who took the name of Benedict XV. Della Chiesa had been a student of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, the Secretary of State under Leo XIII. His essential training had been in diplomacy and this made him well qualified to cope with the war. Immediately upon his accession, Benedict adopted a policy of impartiality and advocated an immediate peace by negotiation. His various peace efforts were ignored, however, and many Catholics in various European countries gave only lukewarm support or made clear an outright rejection of the Pope’s pronouncements on diplomacy. This article concentrates on the reaction of British Catholics, in particular, to Benedict XV’s peace appeals during the war, including his Peace Note of 1917.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , October 2008 , pp. 252 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2009

References

Notes

1 M. Snape, for example, refers to the Guild of the Pope’s Peace in one brief sentence in his article, ‘British Catholicism and the British Army in the First World War’, Recusant History, 26(2), (Oct. 2002), p. 329. S. Gilley also mentions the Guild in passing in ‘The Years of Equipose, 1892–1943’ in McClelland, V. A. and Hodgetts, M. (eds.), From Without the Flaminian Gate (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1999), p. 45 Google Scholar. The latest article to cite the Guild of the Pope’s Peace appeared in The Tablet on 20 Aug. 2005, p. 16. The article, written by Barbara Wall, was a personal reflection on the eight papacies from Pope Benedict XV.

2 Quoted in Rhodes, A., The Power of Rome in the Twentieth Century: The Vatican in the Age of Liberal Democracies, 1870–1922, (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1983), p. 227 Google Scholar. See also Rope, p. 56.

3 The full text of Ad Beatissimi is contained in The Pope and the People: Select Letters and Addresses on Social Questions (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1932), pp. 202–217. An interpretation of the encyclical is given in Pollard, J. F., The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1999), pp. 86–87.Google Scholar

4 Zivojinovic, D. R., The United States and the Vatican Policies, 1914–1918 (Colorado: Colorado Associated University Press, 1978), p. 26.Google Scholar

5 Rope, p. 60.

6 A copy of the letter to the hierarchy is found in Archbishop Whiteside’s Letter to the Clergy, 29 Jan. 1915, SI, VII, C/2, Whiteside Papers, Archdiocese of Liverpool. A complete copy of the Pope’s prayer for peace is contained in Peters, W. H., The Life of Benedict XV (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1959), p. 123.Google Scholar

7 Rope, p. 68.

8 Ibidem, p. 71. The phrase was used by Benedict XV in his allocution to the Sacred College on Christmas Eve, 1914.

9 Ibidem, pp. 88–90. A full translation of the Exhortation was given in The Tablet, 7 Aug. 1915, p. 177.

10 Flannery, H. W. (ed.), Pattern for Peace: Catholic Statements on International Order (Westminster: The Newman Press, 1962), p. 9 Google Scholar. Writing twenty years later, J. Eppstein testified to Benedict’s insight. Two years after Hitler came to power, Eppstein wrote that no one who saw the rearming of Germany could deny that Benedict XV ‘knew human nature only too well…’ For he had predicted ‘after the first year of the war this tragic alternative to the peace for which he pleaded’. Eppstein, J., Must War Come? (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1935), pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

11 It seems that the Pope was obsessed with the rise of Russian power if the Allies won the war. According to J. D. Gregory, the secretary of the British Mission to the Vatican: ‘Benedict XV had one obsession—Russia. In all the conversations I have had with him, he can never keep off the subject. Even the fear of another Kulturkampf, if Germany wins the war, pales in his eyes before the spectre of a Russian victory, and Russian troops on the Bosphorus’. Quoted in A. Rhodes, op. cit., p. 228.

12 Francis Meynell was the son of Wilfrid and Alice Meynell. His father was the manager of Burns & Oates where Francis worked after 1909. He leaned towards left-wing politics. For his autobiography, see Meynell. Stanley Morison converted to Catholicism in December 1908 and in 1913 was introduced to Wilfrid Meynell and employed at Burns & Oates. He was placed with Francis Meynell who was in charge of book design. The two became close friends and they both refused enlistment for military service in 1916. For a biographical sketch, see Stanley Morison: A Portrait (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1971). S. Gilley, in ‘The Years of Equipoise’, op. cit., erroneously states that the Guild was founded by E. I. Watkin and Wilfrid Meynell (p. 45). E. I Watkin may have been a co-founder along with Francis Meynell and Stanley Morison, but Wilfrid Meynell was definitely not involved with the Guild since he was an avid war supporter.

13 Meynell, p. 90. The committee was made up of Francis Meynell, who was also the secretary of the Guild, Stanley Morison, J. F. L. Bray, Christopher St. John, E. I. Watkin, Fr. W. H. Kent, and Fr. H. S. Squirrell.

14 Quoted from the Pope’s Exhortation of July 28 in the Preliminary Notice of the Guild of the Pope’s Peace, [April 1916], Box 24, P IV, S.M.P. See also Rope, p. 89.

15 Preliminary Notice of the Guild of the Pope’s Peace, [April 1916], Box 24, P IV, S.M.P. It was clearly stated that the Guild’s aim was ‘to help now towards the making of the Pope’s Peace. For the achievement of this end the Guild will press for the Holy Father’s own suggested methods—methods which, indeed, he calls “the only way”.’ These were: 1) a truce; 2) a declaration of conciliatory peace terms; and 3) an immediate conference. ‘Only the Pope’s Peace, a spiritual peace, can be either holy or permanent; for any other will be founded on militarism, vengeance, force, and worldly ambitions’.

16 Quoted in Barker, N., Stanley Morison (London: Macmillan, 1972), p. 63.Google Scholar

17 E. I. Watkin converted to Catholicism in 1908 and was a member of the Guild of the Pope’s Peace. He adopted a pacifist approach to war and was a non-combatant in World War I. He was vehemently opposed to conscription. See, for example, his The Crime of Conscription (London: James Clarke, 1939).

18 Letter written in 1968 by E. I. Watkin, quoted in N. Barker, op. cit., p. 63.

19 Quoted in the Catholic Times, 28 Apr. 1916, p. 4.

20 J. Hevin to Bishop Burton, 8 May 1916, Folder 1915–1916, Burton Papers, Archives of the Diocese of Clifton.

21 Watkin, E. I., A Little Book of Prayers for Peace (London, 1916)Google Scholar. The small book of prayers was compiled for the purpose of entreating God to end the scourge of war.

22 Francis Meynell to Burton, 9 Sep. 1916, Folder 1915–1916, Burton Papers. Note the ‘Dear Sir’ instead of ‘My dear Lord’ or ‘Your Lordship’, the customary address to a bishop.

23 See booklet entitled ‘The Pope & the War’, 1917, Box 24, P IV, S.M.P.

24 Bourne to the Duke of Norfolk, 18 Apr. 1916, Box: Nov. 1915–June 1916, Folder: April 1916, 15th Duke of Norfolk Papers, Arundel Castle Archives.

25 James Britten to the Duke of Norfolk, 21 Apr. 1916, Box: Nov. 1915–June 1916, Folder: April 1916, 15th Duke of Norfolk Papers.

26 See, for example, letters from Herbert Dean to Bishop Amigo, 12 Apr. 1916, and W. Marchant to Amigo, 24 Apr. 1916, Box: 1st World War: Involvement of Diocese in Various Home Activities—The Guild of the Pope’s Peace, Amigo Papers, Diocesan Archives of Southwark. While Marchant, in a strongly worded letter, urged Amigo to condemn the Guild with the rest of the hierarchy, Dean, the editor of The Universe, wrote that he was shocked to receive a copy of C.B.N. ‘in which was inserted a seditious pamphlet in which certain Catholics call upon us to join in an effort to “stop the war”, and assert, equivalently, that the Nation does not know what it is fighting for! These people… endeavour to entangle the Catholic body in their doings’. He hoped that they would be ‘promptly and officially disavowed’ because they could undo all the trust which the government put in Catholics.

27 Amigo to Fr. Paine, 13 Apr. 1916, Box: 1st World War: Involvement of Diocese in Various Home Activities—The Guild of the Pope’s Peace, Amigo Papers.

28 A. Ross to Amigo, n.d. [Apr. 1916], and Britten to Amigo, 21 Apr. 1916, Box: 1st World War: Involvement of Diocese in Various Home Activities—The Guild of the Pope’s Peace, Amigo Papers.

29 The Tablet, 29 Apr. 1916, p. 567.

30 Barry, W., ‘False and True Idealism in the War’, Nineteenth Century, 83(495), (May, 1918), p. 913.Google Scholar

31 Ibidem, p. 916.

32 The Tablet, 17 Feb. 1917, p. 218. Cardinal F. Bourne, A., ‘Union Sacrée’: Great Britain in Wartime (London: Burns & Oates, 1917), p. 6.Google Scholar

33 Chesterton, C., The Perils of Peace (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1916), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

34 Chesterton, C., The Prussian Hath Saidin His Heart (London: ChapmanHall, 1914), p. 67.Google Scholar

35 Ibidem, p. 68.

36 Quoted in The Tablet, 1 Apr. 1916, p. 428.

37 House of Lords Debates, vol. 25, col. 857.

38 Chesterton, C., The Perils of Peace, p. 82.Google Scholar

39 Bishop Hicks was the president of the Church of England Peace League, which was founded in 1910. Marrin, A., The Last Crusade: The Church of England in the First World War (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1974), p. 65.Google Scholar

40 The Times, 4 Apr. 1916, p. 9.

41 The Universe, 7 Apr. 1916, p. 3.

42 Dreyfus, J., A History of the Nonesuch Press (London: Nonesuch Press, 1981), p. 9.Google Scholar The press he established after leaving Burns & Oates was the Pelican Press.

43 Local Tribunals were district tribunals that heard and determined the cases of local conscientious objectors. Appeal Tribunals in specified areas decided the cases of those rejected by the Local Tribunals. Finally, the Central Tribunal was the highest authority in deciding appeals. An appeal to the Central Tribunal required the permission of the Appeal Tribunal concerned.

44 Meynell, pp. 93–94.

45 Ibidem, p. 95.

46 Playne, C. E., Society at War, 1914–1916 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931), pp. 278–279 Google Scholar. See also Charles H. Masterman to F. Meynell, 15 Aug. 1916, Box 24, C.O. Letters (Stanley Morison Papers, Cambridge University Library (MSS. Dept.))—1916–1917, S.M.P.

47 Local Tribunals came under increasing criticism for not granting exemptions. On 29 February 1916, Philip Snowden, a member of the Independent Labour Party, condemned the way local tribunals were treating C.O.s. He cited the case of a man who had gone before the tribunals and defended his case convincingly, yet was not exempted from military service. ‘I want to know what would satisfy a tribunal that the man had a conscientious objection’. House of Commons Debates, vol. 80, col. 947. Likewise, in his introduction to I Appeal Unto Caesar, Gilbert Murray cited two faults in Local Tribunals: 1) they did not have the necessary qualifications to deal with the minds of intellectual and religious men; and 2) they were eager to satisfy the War Office and the press. Hobhouse, M., I Appeal Unto Caesar (London: Allen & Unwin, [1917], p. vii Google Scholar. Tribunal proceedings are described in chapter 5 of Boulton, D.. Objection Overruled (London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1967)Google Scholar.

48 Meynell, p. 99.

49 Ibidem, p. 102. Meynell later wrote a lengthy article about his experience as a C.O. in prison. It was to be published in the Daily Herald but this never eventuated. A draft of the article is in Box 24, C.O. Letters—1917–1918, S.M.P.

50 The Times, 1 Feb. 1917, p. 3.

51 Alice Meynell to Francis Meynell, undated [Feb. 1917], Box 24, C.O. Letters—1916–1917, S.M.P.

52 N. Barker, op cit., p. 68.

53 Ibidem, p. 72.

54 Presumably, Morison is here referring to the English Catholic hierarchy, for the Pope clearly had given advice.

55 Stanley A. Morison to Hewins, 19 Oct. 1917, Hewins 66/107, Hewins Papers, Sheffield University Library, Special Collections.

56 The Universe, 28 Apr. 1916, p. 4. The correspondent was W. S. Marchant.

57 Ibidem, 5 May 1916, p. 4.

58 Ibidem. It is important to note that by implying this, Watkin did not mean that the Pope had officially sanctioned the Guild, since he could not do so. Watkin was referring to Benedict’s appeal to Catholics to pray for peace. In this regard, the Guild was only doing what the Pope had asked Catholics to do and thus, had his ‘authority’ only indirectly.

59 Ibidem, p. 5. The quotation of Benedict XV was taken from Allorche Fummo, his Exhortation of 28 July 1915.

60 The Universe, 12 May 1916, p. 1.

61 Catholic Federationist, June 1916, p. 5.

62 Bishop Keating to Fr. H. S. Squirrell, 14 May 1916, Box 24, P IV, S.M.P.

63 In assessing the reaction to the Guild of the Pope’s Peace, it is worth remembering that the lingering after-effect of the modernist crisis of the previous decade may still have played a role in the hierarchy’s opposition to the Guild. Modernism was condemned in the papal encyclical Pascendi, which was published in September 1907. For the modernist controversy, see Barmann, L. F., Baron Friedrich Von Hügel and the Modernist Crisis in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972)Google Scholar and Sagovsky, N., ‘On God’s Side’: A Life of George Tyrrell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapters 12–14.

64 Bishop Keating to Fr. Squirrell, 14 May 1916, Box 24, P IV, S.M.P.

65 A full copy of the text of the Pope’s Peace Note is found in Ehler, S. Z. and Morall, J. B. (eds.), Chürch and State Through the Centuries: A Collection of Historic Documents with Commentaries (London: Burns & Oates, 1954), pp. 371, 374–377.Google Scholar

66 See, for example, the Catholic Times, 24 Aug. 1917, p. 3 and the Catholic Herald, 25 Aug. 1917, p. 4.

67 The Universe, 17 Aug. 1917, p. 1.

68 The Tablet, 18 Aug. 1917, p. 196.

69 Quoted in A. Rhodes, op. cit., p. 242.

70 ‘The Popes and Peace’ (p. 3), [Nov. 1917], Box 24, P IV, S.M.P.

71 Cardinal Pietro Gasparri to Lloyd George, 28 Sep. 1917, F.0. 37 1/3084/17, TheWar Files (Political), Public Record Office, Kew Gardens, London. The letter is also cited by H. W. Flannery (ed.), op. cit., pp. 11–12.

72 Hayes, D., Conscription Conflict (London: Sheppard Press, 1949), p. 283.Google Scholar

73 ‘The Pope’s Plan for the Destruction of Militarism’, [Nov. 1917], Box 24, P IV, S.M.P.

74 S. Morison, ‘Personality and Diplomacy in Anglo-American Relations, 1917’ in Pares, R. and Taylor, A. J. P. (eds.), Essays Presented to Sir Lewis Namier (London: Macmillan, 1956), pp. 431–474.Google Scholar