TOPICS OF THE D.Y.
THE UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM IN EUROPE.
TORD SALISBURY'S speech at the Mansion House J was very hopeful in relation to the prospect of peace, and yet it is obvious that his hopes are founded rather on the growing dread of war than on any growing harmony of purpose amongst the Great Powers. The policy which alarms Europe least, is for the present to drag on in spite of all the difficulties, rather than to incur the enormous risks as well as the equally enormous cost of war. Not that the cost alone would prevent war. No great war was ever yet stopped even by the bankruptcy of one of the belligerents. But the cost is so great that it is a considerable makeweight when none of the aggrieved Powers sees its way clearly to gaining a very con- siderable advantage by war. Lord Salisbury in his speech evidently laid the greatest possible stress on the risk which a newly consolidated Empire like that of Germany would run in forcing on a war by which it would be very difficult for it to gain, and exceedingly easy for it to lose ground. He evidently gives the young German Emperor full credit for perceiving this, and for being quite content, in spite of the excessive burden of his great Army, to let well alone. And Lord Salisbury seems quite as confident that the Czar himself is more than doubtful whether he would not lose more than he would gain by pressing his claims on Bulgaria to an issue certain to kindle a conflagration in the whole Balkan Peninsula. Deeply as the Czar resents the ingratitude, as he calls it, of the Bulgarian people, he is not at all sure how the con- flict with Austria might go, or, if he were too successful, how soon he might not be involved in war with Germany as well. All the restless Powers would be well disposed to fight with limited liability, but none of them see their way to limiting the liability, so close is the network of relations between the stronger and the weaker States. Even France could not attack Italy without laying herself open to both Germany and England,—and hence, no doubt, the disposition which M. Goblet shows to treat the Massowah question with a certain magnanimity. The situation is one of eminently unstable equilibrium ; but that is the very reason why all the rulers are so care- ful not to bring the nicely adjusted system about their ears. The Powers of Europe are acting very much as the crew of a ship act who know that they are carrying a cargo of gunpowder, and that a single spark allowed to fall into the hold, a single carelessness in the tropics, a single sharp collision between a few grains of the powder and any moving object, might send the whole vessel suddenly into the air. Under such circumstances, even drinking sailors will take care not to go near the hold when they are under the influence of drink. Under such circum- stances, captains and mates who enjoy a stiff glass of grog, will take care to abstain. And so, too, in the present condition of Europe, it is the extreme anxiety which the unstable equilibrium causes that makes every statesman who has the arbitrament between peace and war in his power, measure his words and temper his deeds as one who does not know what a single electric spark, even though it were only an unguarded sentence, might bring forth. Russia, Germany, Austria, France, all of them find the situation hardly tolerable as it is, so great is the strain on their military resources, so incalculable are the emergencies against which they might have at any moment to provide. And yet each of them feels that, hardly tolerable as the situation is, war might render it much worse; and as none of them feels any confidence that war would render it any better, as none of them sees any way to a situation of com- plete safety, and hardly any of them to a situation in which the present high tension would be greatly relieved, they are all less indisposed to bear the heavy burden under which they stagger now, than to run the risk of falling to the ground under one still greater. Nevertheless, though we believe fully that the increasing hope of peace is far better described as a growing fear of war than as a growing harmony of purpose, it is not at all a small matter that there should be this growing fear of war, especially when we consider how thoroughly reasonable that growing fear is. The whole tendency of military and naval science in modern times has been towards rendering great and sudden catastrophes more and more likely, without enlightening the world much as to what these great and sudden catastrophes may be. Every experiment made in naval warfare shows the enormous difficulty of calculating what modern navies, when they get to work in earnest, will be able to effect. Some think that the weaker navies will be much more effective in the future than they were in the past, and the stronger navies relatively less effective ; in other words, that the power of attack has been diminished by the newest advances of naval science, and the power of defence increased. But then, again, so much has been shown to depend on promptitude and pluck, that the result arrived at when both assailants and assailed are furnished by the same nation, may be totally different from the result arrived at when the assailants are of one people and the assailed of another. It is much the same with the science of military fortification. It has, every one seems to say, been wholly revolutionised by the latest advances in the art of artillery ; but how the revolution will work out in practice as between any two of the great military Powers, no one seems to know, and no one is very anxious to try. Europe, in short, is in a state of complete military and naval agnosticism, and has no fancy for the sort of dangerous experiment by which alone that con- dition of trembling agnosticism can be removed. Not for the first time in the world, agnosticism plays into the hands of the conservatives, and teaches the rulers of great nations, and the commanders of vast armies, to let even ill alone, rather than pry into the secrets of destiny with so very much staked upon an uncertain issue as is likely to be lost and won if once the unstable equilibrium comes to an end.
Yet the sudden appearance of a confident military hero, whether he were really a man of genius or not, in any one of the States which are now measuring each other's strength so anxiously, would doubtless bring this unstable structure of peace down with a rush. That is why the temporary rise of General Boulanger, though no one knew what military capacity the man had, inspired so much panic all over Europe. A rash man without genius would terminate the armed truce quite as effectually,—perhaps, indeed, much more effectually,—than an audacious military genius of the highest insight, since the prospect of an easy victory would be too much for any of the Great Powers who are now standing watching their opportunity. Indeed, the best chance of peace seems to be that the nervous dread which paralyses all the Powers shall for a time continue, till the small and undeveloped States which have grown up in the South-East of Europe since the Treaty of Berlin, shall have had time to form alliances amongst themselves, and to render the responsibility and risk of undermining such order as they have established, much greater than it now is. A peace which lasts only because it requires much more rashness and presumptuousness to break it than to keep quiet, is not a peace on the durability of which it is easy to rely. We all know that Russia is as anxious as ever to go to Constantinople ; that Austria is as anxious as ever not to let Russia aggrandise herself at the expense of Austria ; that Germany is as anxious as ever about both her Eastern and her Western frontiers ; and France as anxious as ever to be rid of the threatening walls of Metz and Strasburg, and to give Italy the humiliation which she has so long owed her. While these things are so, peace is but " the policy which alarms us least ;" and yet it may be a long time,—indeed, the situation has already endured for many years,—before the policy which alarms us least shall be succeeded by that neck-or-nothing policy which it takes either a soldier of fortune or a "man of destiny" to risk.
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