THE FIDGETINESS OF ENGLISH OPINION.
WE spoke last week of the nervousness of the Con- tinent; but England also, at least England as represented in the journals, is in a fidgety mood. There is a readiness to republish and to believe, if only for a day, every sinister rumour tending towards war, which is not wholly to be ascribed to the dearth of subjects caused by • the unusual lull in all questions of internal politics. If appearances may be trusted at all, the very idea of war has been given up on the Continent for this year, and the statesmen are everywhere taking holiday, or, as in Austria, discussing arrangements which, though dictated no doubt in view of a possible war, will take months to finish, or even to begin. Lord Salisbury announces that he shall not return to London till 1 he end of October ; M. de Giers has taken a two months' holiday in Italy ; M. Carnot is showing himself in the Departments, and making optimist speeches ; and Count Kalnoky is trying hard to induce the Treasuries of the many countries whose foreign policy he guides to give a little more money for camps of defence. The Sovereigns are arranging for a round of visits, and the Generals are up to their eyes in work, the management of large armies in mimic cam- paigns, which suggest war, but do not immediately precede it. . Nevertheless, it is considered in England "a serious fact " that Russia still accumulates cavalry in Poland, probably to relieve provinces almost without food, and that the Grand Duke of Baden should have made an apprehen- sive speech to his military commanders. The latter incident has been the theme of countless comments ; yet the speech was, even if it were spoken, a mere expression of opinion by a gentleman with no more information than the rest of -us have. If the Grand Duke, related as he is to the Imperial House, had said that Germany was about to attack France, it would have been serious indeed, for he might have spoken from positive knowledge of secret preparations ; but he is only reported to have said that France, undeterred by defeat, was about again to attack Germany. That, if his Highness believes it, is a natural thing to say to officers whose energy he was desirous to stimulate, and to blame him for saying it is hypercriticism, but it is only the utterance of an opinion. The Grand Duke has no more means of knowing the secret counsels of France than the Editor of the Times has, and only speaks so positively because Badeners, who would have to face the first rush of the French, can never leave- off thinking of their dangerous neighbours. His speech, even if he made it, is only an opinion like another ; and the opinion of a man who, from his special position, can neither be quite impartial nor quite cool.
The strangest of all evidences of English fidgetiness, however, is the way in which the Egyptian question, and the question of the great war, are habitually mixed up. It seems to be imagined that because the French are allying themselves with Russia, and because the great war is a little more probable, therefore we may have almost immediately to fight for the possession of Egypt, or by retiring from Cairo, to confess that we are unequal to the war. That is, we should say, the exact reverse of the true situation. If the idea of the " great revenge " on Ger- many were abandoned, England would certainly be in danger, though even then the danger would not be acute. Russia has no interest whatever in driving us out of Cairo, which she does not expect to take, and which does not even threaten her ultimate line of march. Her object is Constantinople, not Egypt; and if, in pursuit of that object, she wished to keep the British Army locked up, sh3 would threaten India from the north and west, and so compel us to provide the Viceroy with reinforcements on a grand scale. Threatening Egypt would be of no use, for its only result would be to strengthen the British squad- ron in the Eastern Mediterranean, and to place the forts of Alexandria in a full condition of defence. On the other hand, France .would shrink from a war with England single- handed, and for the sake of Egypt, for the most obvious reasons. She might lose, and if she lost would lose not only her claim to Egypt, but her possession of the southern coast of the Mediterranean. Her peasantry do not care about Egypt, or know precisely where it is ; and they do care, as they have proved repeatedly, that, while the great contest remains unfought, the strength of France shall neither be wasted on other enterprises nor diverted from its first duty, which is to keep the country safe against invasion by land. The French have seen German armies march through them on the way to the capture of Paris, and they have neither forgotten nor forgiven the humiliation which the sight inspired. Moreover, when war is in question, the opinion of the Army is a great factor in French decisions ; and the Army, we may be perfectly sure, has no eagerness for a war in which the sailors would have most of the work and all the resulting glory. On the other hand, if the idea of the great war is not abandoned, France will certainly not make a casus belli of the occupation of Egypt. She will worry as much as she can, as a continuous form of protest ; she will stir up the Sultan to worry, as that increases her prestige at Constantinople ; and she will cry aloud to all who will hear that Great Britain is perfidious, and outside Europe in- ordinately grasping. But she will not fight unless com- pelled. The men who rule France, whether we like them or not, are statesmen who know history ; and the idea of their wishing to begin a mortal struggle with Germany, Italy, and Austria, by compelling the British Fleet to aid the hostile alliance, is not only visionary, but absurd: Nations like France, as full of calculation as of emotion, do not commit follies of that kind or add to the number of their enemies because they will not wait. If the great war arrives and France wins the day, the order to us to quit Egypt will be peremptory enough—too peremptory it may be for general English patience—but while it is being waited for, France has quite sufficient self-control to avoid making a question which could wait for ten years, if needful, a peremptory cause of a struggle in which victory is by no means certain.
It would, of course, be foolish to assert that the great war may not be provoked by some unexpected incident, for, as Lord Lytton once expressed it in the ablest story he ever wrote, " every accident is a providence, and before a providence snaps every human will ; " but there is one way of testing the importance of incidents which journalists might more frequently apply. Are they of the kind which in military opinion either in France, or Russia, or Germany, make continued peace a little dishonourable, a little like the refusal of a challenge ? If they are, there is danger, it maybe of the imminent kind ; for in neither of the three countries can the rulers endure that the Army should despise them. So long, however, as military opinion is not excited, the ruling men remain free ; and so long as they are free, only the most serious danger to the State will produce a declaration of war. The forces are too equal, and the price of defeat will be too heavy. Remember, that one of the oldest causes of war, a secret contempt for the enemy, has totally disappeared. The nations are standing aghast at each other's armaments. There is not an officer in France so ignorant as to believe that a march to Berlin would be a military promenade, or an officer in Germany so uplifted as to think that he could again reach Paris without losses from which the boldest heart might shrink. The sacrifices of twenty years have at least done that for the Continent ; and equal opponents do not engage in duels to the death unless there is some reason either of interest or of honour to provoke them to run the risk. The honour may be imaginary, no doubt, but Englishmen ought to know by this time what are the causes which in Continental opinion make war either expedient or imperative. Until one of them occurs, fidgetiness is only a sign that the reasons which make for peace are imperfectly apprehended.
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