NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE foreign situation is strange in the extreme. War is being waged in Tripoli and on what would not long ago have been called a great scale, for there are some 80,000 or 90,000 troops engaged—a far greater number of European soldiers than were employed by us to reconquer India at the time of the Mutiny. Again, a revolution which is affecting a third of the human race is proceeding in China. Lastly, there exists in South-Eastern Europe a situation, dealt with by us elsewhere, which can only be described as full of anxiety and menace. Yet, though the globe may thus be said to be alight at both ends, there is almost nothing in the way of actual facts to record. For the moment the world seems spellbound. For the past fortnight we have been told that at any moment we may hear that the abdication of the Manchu dynasty is accomplished and the Republic accepted, yet the moment never seems to come. A similar veil of silence has fallen over the deserts of Tripoli, while in the Balkans, though we know that great things are maturing, there seems no stir under the coverlet of snow. It would be well if the spell could be prolonged, but unhappily there is no chance of that, and sooner or later the dire force at work will begin to move again. Then we may discover that it is like the cloud in Wordsworth, and "movoth altogether if it move at all."
