All publicists in all countries are saying that there has
not been for twenty years so good a prospect of durable peace as this Christmas presents. The Powers have no new causes of .quarrel among themselves, and have evidently agreed to let the .old ones rest until it is a little safer to fight them out. The Sings who control great armies are all unfriendly to war,— the Emperor of Germany, because he thinks Socialism more pressing than any foreign question ; the Emperor of Russia, because he must be his own Commander-in-Chief, and does not want that huge responsibility; the Emperor of Austria, because he is a weary man with nothing to gain, and no son to inherit if he gained anything ; and the King of Italy, because for him the stake would be his throne. The condition of the funds in all countries shows that financiers share these .optimist conclusions; and industrial speculation was never more rife, the check on it not being the fear of war, but of strikes. The publicists and financiers are probably right, the chief ground of uncertainty being the degree to which peace hangs on individual lives. The next Emperor of Austria will be a, very different man from the present, who is the most successful diplomatist left in Europe, and should the Nihilists ever execute their sentence on the Czar, it is impossible to be certain where substantial power in Russia would at first deposit itself. The Russian Army, always in great crises the first factor in the State, is not disinclined to a great war.
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