The usefulness of the bag

Under the Lateran Treaty the ambassadors accredited to the Vatican had a free right to communicate with their countries. Warring Italy refused to keep this clause of the Treaty. The Pope had a moral obligation to secure free communication between Osborne and London. Therefore the Vatican offered Osborne and his colleagues the privilege of using the papal diplomatic bag. They made the condition that into the bag Osborne should put only material which concerned his mission as envoy at the Holy See. Osborne perforce gave this undertaking. He scrupulously kept the undertaking to report only on what concerned his mission to the Vatican. ‘Discussion of any point at the Secretariat of State brings it within the purview of my official activities, and consequently enables me to report on it without violating my undertaking. So Jesuitical am I becoming!’ From about this time (November 1940) he started to say nearly anything he liked that helped the British government. Once we even find him trying to provoke the Secretariat of State into confirming unconsciously that the Germans had set up an air base at Frascati. If it were asked whether this was ‘espionage’, or intelligent observation from a neutral state, or a breach of the undertaking given to Monsignor Montini, he could reply that everything of this sort concerned his mission; for a German base at Frascati could affect the security of the Vatican from British bombers.