THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS
sentative was accredited, but this has never happened unless he had given special cause for dissatisfaction in the discharge of his official duties, and has hardly ever been proposed otherwise than by private communication addressed by one sovereign to another. The present untoward incident is quite different. Cardinal Prince Hohenlohe has been rejected even before leaving Berlin. He has been rejected by a brief note from a papal minister to the German chargé d'affaires; nay, he has been rejected without any reasons being alleged for such an extreme step.
But however much I may regret this extraordinary step on the part of the Holy See, I do think we should not be justified in resenting it by a suspension of diplomatic intercourse. We owe it to our Catholic fellow subjects to continue our endeavors to define in a friendly and pacific way the line which separates the secular from the spiritual power. At the same time, we consider it our duty to proceed with the utmost caution in order to spare the feelings of the religious, and endeavor to convince the pope of our temperate and conciliatory views. Therefore, I shall deem it incumbent upon me to advise his majesty the emperor, to select some other representative to the Vatican, who, tho he may not be equally efficacious as the last nominee would have been, shall still possess the confidence of both powers sufficiently for the purpose of his office. I must not, however, conceal that our task has been rendered very difficult by what has occurred.[1]
- ↑ The London Times correspondent says at this point: "Herr Windhorst, an ultramontane, replied to Prince Bismarck's speech, saying that Cardinal Hohenlohe 'was the servant of the pope and should have asked his master's permission to become the German representative at the Vatican before accepting that office; and likened the appointment of a cardinal to the embassy at Rome to the appointment of a German adjutant-general to the pope as his nuncio at Berlin.' To Herr Windhorst Prince Bismarck then devoted the remainder of his speech."
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