The news has everywhere been received with alarm as well
as sadness, universal Europe having made up its mind that the Emperor stood between it and a general war. The idea, though scarcely formulated, is that Russia will now defy Austria by an advance into the Balkans, and that France, dreading the new Emperor when thus left free, will in alarm plunge into revolution and consequent war. All that is pro- bable, most probable, as it is also that Austria, relying on the support of a military Emperor in Berlin, may demand that the Russian armies shall roll back from her frontier; but the expected does not always occur. The financiers remain steady in their conviction that war will occur next year and not this, and the character of the new Emperor, upon which so much depends, is not thoroughly understood. He is a young man, twenty-nine, and very military; but the serious point for Europe is whether there is in him any element of rashness. It is not the characteristic of his House, even when its head was a man like Frederick William L, and Prince Bismarck is as influential with him as
with his grandfather. who prepared for war and waged war without loving it. If the new Emperor is not rash, war may be postponed still.
