August 3.
At 8.30 left The Hague and went by rail, via Cologne and
Ehrenbreitstein, to Homburg, arriving in the evening.
August 5.
This morning resumed my duties as ambassador at Berlin.
There was one proceeding at the final meeting of the conference which I have omitted, but which really ought to find a place in this diary. Just before the final speeches, to the amazement of all and almost to the stupefaction of many, the president, M. de Staal, handed to the secretary, without comment, a paper which the latter began to read. It turned out to be a correspondence which had taken place, just before the conference, between the Queen of the Netherlands and the Pope.
The Queen's letter—written, of course, by her ministers, in the desire to placate the Catholic party, which holds the balance of power in the Netherlands—dwelt most respectfully on the high functions of his Holiness, etc., etc., indicating, if not saying, that it was not the fault of her government that he was not invited to join in the conference.
The answer from the Pope was a masterpiece of Vatican skill. In it he referred to what he claimed was his natural position as a peacemaker on earth, dwelling strongly on this point.
The reading of these papers was received in silence, and not a word was publicly said afterward regarding them, though in various quarters there was very deep feeling. It was felt that the Dutch Government had taken this means of forestalling local Dutch opposition, and that it was a purely local matter of political partizanship that ought never to have been intruded upon a conference of the whole world.
I had no feeling of this sort, for it seemed to me well enough that the facts should be presented; but a leading representative of one of the great Catholic powers, who drove home with us, was of a different mind. This eminent diplomatist from one of the strongest Catholic countries, and himself a Catholic, spoke in substance as follows: "The Vatican has always been, and is to-day, a storm-center. The Pope and his advisers have never hesitated to urge on war, no matter how bloody, when the slightest of their ordinary worldly purposes could be served by it. The great religious wars of Europe were entirely stirred up and egged on by them; and, as everybody knows, the Pope did everything to prevent the signing of the treaty of Munster, which put an end to the dreadful Thirty Years' War, even going so far as to declare the oaths taken by the plenipotentiaries at that congress of no effect.
"All through the middle ages and at the Renaissance period the Popes kept Italy in turmoil and bloodshed for their own family and territorial advantages, and they kept all Europe in turmoil, for two centuries after the Reformation,—in fact, just as long as they could,—in the wars of religion. They did everything they could to stir up the war between Austria and Prussia in 1866, thinking that Austria, a Catholic power, was sure to win; and then everything possible to stir up the war of France against Prussia in 1870 in order to accomplish the same purpose of checking German Protestantism; and now they are doing all they can to arouse hatred, even to deluge Italy in blood, in the vain attempt to recover the temporal power, though they must know that they could not hold it for any length of time even if they should obtain it.