I do not imagine that Mr. Chesterton identifies “Rome” with the Holy See, though others, no doubt, do. It is interesting, however, to remark that before the war, and for a considerable period during the war, the policy of the Holy See was directed to the support of Germany. I have often wondered how a Catholic like M. Hovelaque accommodates his thesis with that fact. If the war, as he says, was only an episode in the secular conflict of Germany with Rome (meaning the Roman Church as the spiritual successor of the Roman Empire), how came it that before and during the war the directors of the Roman Church were pro-German? Something must surely be wrong here; for either the Roman Church did not take that view of Germany which M. Hovelaque has defined, or, as seems to me more probable, the Holy See had another end in view than victory over Germany, namely, alliance with a prospectively victorious Germany! With this key, I think, the mystery is unlocked for the ordinary man, however much it continues sealed to the faithful. As _The Times Literary Supplement_ said: “Modernists understand no better than Newman the springs of Roman ecclesiastical policy, which is never fanatical or idealistic, but always based on cool political calculation.” And, undoubtedly, the “cool political calculation” of the Holy See, both before and during the first years of the war, was that Germany would win. If this was not the case, how are we to explain the sudden change over of policy when it began to appear that Germany, after all, was not to be the victor? That at a certain stage in the war such a change took place is well known to everybody, and it was openly admitted in the Catholic _Dublin Review_. “The pendulum of Catholicism,” said the _Dublin Review_, “has swung away from Germany ... with Austria and Spain ... and with the English-speaking peoples and their Latin Allies the Catholic order in the era of the future.” The “eternal conflict” theory must go by the board after this, for it obviously fails to fit the facts.