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Father Roncalli also organized a center for the guidance and protection of young students, and last week crowds thronged its old quarters in Bergamo's Palazzo Asperti to see "the Pope's mirror," beneath which is inscribed in Latin "Know Thyself," to remind students to check up on their appearance before going out. For, though he wore plain priestly black on all occasions, Roncalli has always been sensitive to appearance. During his summer vacations in Sotto il Monte as a bishop and cardinal, he would receive the priests of the region dressed as they were, and noticed that one of them was habitually unshaven and another's collar was usually askew. With characteristic diplomacy, Roncalli made no direct comment, but one day he casually produced a razor with the words: "I happen to have this extra razor—would you like it, Reverendo?" And on the other he pressed some collars: "These are getting a bit tight for me, Reverendo, but I think they'll do very well for you."
Father Roncalli was drafted into the Italian army during World War I, and turned up in Sotto il Monte one day in 1916 as a balding, bulky medical corps sergeant sporting a dashing cape and a fiercely bristling military mustache. "I grew it in a moment of weakness," he confessed later, shaved it off when he became a lieutenant and a chaplain. At war's end he was back teaching at the seminary until Pope Benedict XV summoned him to Rome to help reorganize the administration of missionary work in the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.
Fancy Footwork. In 1925 Pope Pius XI made him an archbishop and gave him his first diplomatic assignment: Apostolic Visitor to Bulgaria. Five years later the Pope promoted this promising envoy to Nuncio, and in 1935 sent him to Turkey and Greece as Apostolic Delegate. For ten years Archbishop Roncalli lived in Istanbul, became a recognized expert on the Middle East and an adept at diplomatic fancy footwork, e.g., in neutral Turkey, during World War II, he managed to keep the respect and good will of both the Allies and the Germans.
One night in Istanbul, near war's end. Nuncio Roncalli received a coded cable from the Vatican, decoded it himself because his secretary was out. and decided at first that he must have made a mistake: he was ordered to proceed immediately to Paris as Nuncio to France. When the order proved to be correct. Roncalli is said to have stopped off in Rome at the Secretariat of State. "Are you out of your minds?" he asked. "I can't handle a job like that." "It wasn't our idea." they replied. "It was the Holy Father's."