February — undated

After the religious clause was today again postponed, M. Batalha Reis (Portugal), Professor at the University of Coimbra, who loved to bring to light forgotten pages of history, approached the President and said:

“If you permit, I would like to make an inquiry of you, in your personal capacity as a world-renowned teacher of, as well as a maker of, history. What interpretation should be placed on this undoubted fact to which I venture to call your attention? The Treaties of Westphalia (1648), which were under discussion for two years, deal at about equal length with matters temporal and spiritual. Ecclesiastical settlements engrossed as much time as did the territorial adjustments, yet here today, when we are engaged on problems of even greater importance, the delegates seem averse to any reference to the Church or mention of the Supreme Being. What conclusion do you deduce from this striking contrast?”

“I think,” said the President, after a short pause, “that the world has progressed since the sad era of the Thirty Years’ War. By the instrument to which you refer the independence of Switzerland, where all Christian religions flourished, was recognized; and it was further agreed that all signatories to the Treaty were in the future to permit freedom of worship and liberty of conscience. I cannot say that all of them lived up to these stipulations, but it was a step, a great step, forward.”

Then the usually silent Makino chimed in. He had evidently been reading his Martens:

“The right of immigration was also assured by this treaty to all nations. I fear that provision has also not been honored in our draft with a strict observance.”

It seemed to me that for once our historian-President was stumped, and wisely, I think, it was agreed that this exchange of views should be omitted from the record of the proceedings. It was, after all, but an informal conversation!

In the short exchange of views between the President and the Portuguese delegate, who was continually urging the invocation of the favor of the Almighty in the Preamble to the Covenant, that now ensued, I saw that House thought to enter the parley and then changed his mind, and, as so often, held his peace. When we were alone I asked him what he had had in mind to say and he replied: “You see that was exactly the course that the Founding Fathers of the Confederacy pursued at Montgomery in drafting their Constitution in 1860. Then I decided to say nothing because my information might have further complicated matters and certainly it could not be regarded as a favorable omen! And by the way, who was that great statesman who said ‘the things I have left unsaid have not hurt me half as much as the things I have said’? I can’t recall his name—but he was a great man.”