“Your Excellency has repeatedly publicly stated that the aims and objects sought by the German Reich were just and reasonable.
“In his reply to my message the President of Poland has made it plain that the Polish Government are willing, upon the basis set forth in my message, to agree to solve the controversy which has arisen between the Republic of Poland and the German Reich by direct negotiation or the process of conciliation.
“Countless human lives can yet be saved, and hope may still be restored that the nations of the modern world may even now construct the foundation for a peaceful and happier relationship, if you and the Government of the German Reich will agree to the pacific means of settlement accepted by the Government of Poland. All the world prays that Germany, too, will accept.”
But, My Lord, Germany would not accept, nor would she accept the appeals by the Pope which appear in the next document.
I am sorry—the President of Poland’s reply, TC-72 becomes Number 127, GB-61.
They would not agree to those proposals, nor would they pay heed to the Pope’s appeal, which is TC-72, Number 139 on the same date, the 24th of August, which becomes GB-62. I do not think it is necessary to read that. It is an appeal in similar terms. And there is yet a further appeal from the Pope on the 31st of August, TC-72, Number 14, which becomes GB-63. It is 141; I beg your pardon. It is TC-72, Number 141. I think the printing is wrong in the Tribunal’s translation:
“The Pope is unwilling to abandon hope that pending negotiations may lead to a just pacific solution, such as the whole world continues to pray for.”
I think it is unnecessary to read the remainder of that. If the Pope had realized that those negotiations to which he referred as the “pending negotiations” in the last days of August, which we are about to deal with now, were completely bogus negotiations, bogus insofar as Germany was concerned, and put forward, as indeed they were—and as I hope to illustrate to the Tribunal in a moment—simply as an endeavor to dissuade England either by threat or by bribe from meeting her obligations to Poland, then perhaps he would have saved himself the trouble in ever addressing that last appeal.