THE SCARE ON THE CONTINENT.
IT is impossible to deny—and we certainly have no intention of denying—that the condition of the Continent just now is very grave. Its three greatest States are armed to the teeth, each having ready a million of trained soldiers, and each nursing against a neighbour some serious cause either of grudge or apprehension. In the extreme South-East, an ancient despotism, possessed of great territories and an unparalleled site for a capital, is dying of misgovernment, and no one knows who will be its heirs ; while all over the North another despotism is, to all appearance, in the throes of some undefined and undefinable impulse of revolution. There are ample reasons for disquiet, or even for alarm, in such a situation, but we do not quite know why the Tory journals delight in them so much. Their Government is evidently not alarmed, for it is slightly reducing its Army, and shows no disposition to accept Lord Hartington's offer of sup- port in an increase to the Fleet. Yet they report every dangerous fact in a form which exaggerates its importance, and appear inclined to believe not only that war may be, but that it will be, having already been resolved on. This week, for example, two German journals—the North-German Gazette and the Post—known or believed to be usually inspired by Prince Bismarck, have been asserting that Russia is an aggres- sive State, that she has increased her armaments unreason- ably, that she is building new fortresses in Poland, and that the object of her rulers must be to accustom her people to the notion that they are threatened by Germany, and so to prepare the way for an attack. Articles of that kind are un- doubtedly of grave importance, because their appearance proves that Prince Bismarck is not solicitous to be, or at all events to seem to be, on good terms with Russia ; but the dis- tance between the publication of such language and a declaration of war may be very great indeed. Prince Bismarck is not officially responsible for the journals, and there are facts to be studied on the other side. In the first place, Prince Bismarck not only desires to carry his Bill increasing the German Army by 60,000 men, but to carry it without exciting the needless hostility which an unnecessary demand of the kind would, even in Germany, excite. He is anxious to convince the people and the Deputies and especially the Deputies from the minor States, like Baden and Bavaria, that there is real danger ; and knowing their suspicion of Russia, he declares that the danger arises from that side. This policy is the more acceptable to him, because he does not wish the Aus- trians to take alarm at his preparations, and knows that they also are nervous about Russian irritation at the state of affairs within the Balkan peninsula,—an irritation very far from being concealed. In the second place, it takes two Governments to make a war, and the Government of St. Petersburg is palpably anxious at present not to be drawn into any quarrel with its western neighbour. It has ordered the hostile articles in the German Press to be suppressed in Russia, and has directed its own organs to declare that Russia always has been, and now is, friendly to Germany, against which she is making no preparations. And thirdly, it should be observed that there is no sign of alarm amongst the great financiers, the Exchanges of Europe remaining unaffected, and the money- dealers looking forward to a rise, as if they held all these verbal quarrels to be matters of no account. That is no proof that Prince Bismarck will not strike, for Germany can get into motion without a loan, but it is proof that some of the keenest and most interested men in Europe see no sign of the coming storm. The total effect of the facts is not so much to create an apprehension of war, as a belief that some motive is influencing German action to which we do not as yet possess the clue.
We do not affect to possess one ; but there is an explanation of Prince Bismarck's action which, though far from reassuring, fits the facts better than any project of his for bringing on a frightfully dangerous war. The German Chancellor must, of all men in Europe, be the on' most interested in all that is now occurring within the Russian Empire. Is it not possible that he, who undoubtedly has exaggerated the power of the German Socialists, and who has met their efforts by a simple and direct application of force, may exaggerate the revolutionary forces in Russia, may expect commotions and changes the re- sult of which, in his judgment, would be either a military dictatorship and a necessity for war, or anarchy of a kind which would require and greatly tempt German inter- ference, and may desire to be ready with his favourite expedient ? It seems to us that a statesman like Prince Bismarck, essentially Conservative, if not reactionary, pene- trated, as he has avowed, by an impression of Russian insta- bility, embittered by his own contest with Socialism—a doc- trine which, recollect, he thinks utterly senseless, as well as bad—and heated by his own very considerable danger from assassins, may see in Russia all the signs of revolution, and think that with revolution might arrive a dangerous readiness for external action. Or might not he, a diplomatist of the old school, familiar with the desperate policies some- times pressed upon Kings, expect that if the Nihilists succeeded, and drove the Emperor Alexander either to his grave or to abdication, the new Czar, a resolute and even rash man, might in despair place everything on the hazard of a die, declare for the Panslavists, and by an attack on Austria force on a collision with Germany ? We know nothing, of course, of the Chancellor's thoughts, and profess to know nothing; but such thoughts would not be unnatural in such a man, in such a position ; and if he entertained them, his action would be explained. He is arming Germany to the very utmost of which she is capable, not in expectation of war with Russia as she is, much less in pursuance of a design of war, but in fear of war with Russia as she may at any moment become,—of Russia in the hands of Revolutionists, or of a Czar bent on baffling the Revolution by an appeal to the Panslavist thirst for glory and extension. Whether the Chancellor's appre- hension is correct or otherwise, does not matter. If he feels it, then it is correct for him, and it is precisely the one apprehension which his master would feel at least as keenly as himself. The Emperor William certainly desires no war with Russia, and probably would refuse war against his nephew under any provocation but direct menace or attack. But the Emperor, very Conservative, very aged, and made painfully melancholy by the ingratitude of his subjects, who, as he thinks, not unjustly, have struck at a Sovereign who has done much for them, is just the man to believe that Revolutionaries might do anything, and might require putting down with the strong hand. His life reaches back very nearly to the point of time when all that happened once before. Under this explanation, the natural course for the Chancellor would be to increase the Army to its utmost limits, to warn Austria to be ready, and to hint loudly to all Germans that he expected danger from the east, danger be could not in precise words explain. That is what he is doing, and that would mean not war, but pre- paration for a war which might break out, if certain events in Russia, which have not occurred, but which seem to German minds possible, should occur. But if Prince Bismarck thinks such events probable, then they are probable ? Is that quite so ? Prince Bismarck is a very far-sighted man, with a profound knowledge of many countries and many Courts, but he and every other man of his age and position are liable to be unconsciously influenced by two ideas, not yet proved to be true. We suspect that every ruling man outside Eng- land thinks social revolution nearer than it is, and under- estimates the immense force of habit, and the greater force which peasant-proprietorship has enlisted on the side of order. They feel the restlessness of the men of cities too much, and see too much of the violence of those who attack themselves ; and they are afraid, and disposed, as we see, to extreme measures of prevention. And they are all—one can see it in every successive memoir—possessed with the notion, instilled into them by the events of Louis XVI.'s reign, that every revolution must be propagandist, that it is a lava-flood which must pour out somewhere. The notion that it may be non- propagandist—that, for example, in Russia, one bribe to the people may be release from military service—never comes home to them, and their first idea always and everywhere is to "wall in" the Revolution. That implies military prepara- tion, and it may be military preparation directed to that end, and not directed to immediate war, which we are now discuss- ing. We only trust that it is so. We cannot conceive of the result which would render a European war just now, with such vast forces in the field and such resolute men to guide them, and commencing so near the centre where the interests of all European States, except England, touch, less than one of the most terrible calamities that ever befell humanity.
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