TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PROBABILITIES OF WAR.
THERE is even less reason than there was last week for considering peace assured. The little Powers of Eastern Europe speak openly of the " serious danger" in front ; M. Ristics, who is Slavophil, has resigned the Servian Premiership ; the Roumanian Premier has asked for a new military credit ; and the Great Powers, though they raise no loans, are unre- lazing in their other preparations. The concentration of Russian troops in Poland continues, and a large force has been stationed in Bessarabia, evidently with a view to coerce Roumania, which is said, on fairly good evidence, to have secretly joined the League of Peace. A suspicion, too, has arisen that the Powers, though professing great anxiety for peace, are not altogether reluctant to engage in war, and may, therefore, take advantage of an opportunity. Prince Bismarck, it is believed, grows more and more nervous at the incompleteness of his work, and at the tacit alliance between Russia and France, and would run a serious risk if he saw a chance of interposing a powerful Polish State between the great Slav Power and the Empire he has created. In an Austro-Russian war he would find such a chance, and he may see reason to believe that he could hold back France until the Eastern quarrel was on the road to settlement. The tranquillity of France is a singular and most perplexing feature in the situation. The rumours, again, of Count Kalnoky's retirement, though so steadily denied, show that Hungarian ideas are influencing the Emperor-King, and the dominant Hungarian idea is to fight Russia while the alliance with Germany and Italy holds good. Above all, the whole conduct of Russia indicates that her Sovereign, whether he has made up his mind or not to any course of policy, has not dismissed war from his thoughts or calculations as one of the few hopeful courses open to him.
Many motives must just now predispose the Czar to war. His reign, so far, has not been fortunate. He has achieved no external success, or rather has suffered a great defeat—for the expulsion of Russia from the Balkans is a great defeat, patent to every Russian subject, and so is the formation of the League of Peace—and his internal difficulties remain quite as serious as ever. It is true that Nihilism, properly so called, is on the decline, and that many Nihilist leaders are in prison or Siberia ; but the severance between the educated class and the Throne grows always more marked, and the Universities are penetrated with revolutionary or discontented feeling. The recent orders intended to confine office to well- born men are symptoms that the struggle with the professional classes is acute, and strange rumours reach the West occa- sionally of the arrest and punishment of numerous officers of the Army. As the Government must use educated men in all departments of the Administration, it most feel this discontent a vexation, even if it can rely, in the last resort, on the devotion of the peasantry, and that devotion has of late years been greatly shaken. There is much suffering in the interior of Russia, especially in the Eastern provinces, and the old difficulty of serfage, removed by Alexander IL, has been superseded by a new difficulty as to land which, if not insuperable, is as harassing as our own difficulty in Ireland. The peasants claim the soil, and cannot have it. The respect for the Throne, upon which every Russian institution rests, does not grow, and is diminished by the Sovereign's seclusion in Gatechina, and by the precautions the departments think it advisable to take to secure his personal safety. The Czar, though he is a moody man, and probably not a wise one in the selection of agents— his Finance Ministers are often changed, and his Ministers of the Interior fail—is a patriot as well as a Romanoff, and may well be inclined to listen to the party which tells him through a thousand voices that his road out of his difficulties lies through foreign war. If he is victorious, and therefore master in the Balkans—for that peninsula will be his prize of victory—all Russia will rally to his side, he will be perfectly safe from Nihilists, and he may make any administrative concession he thinks fit, even to calling the Deliberative Council to which at the commence- ment of his reign he was not unfavourable. His renown will be great among all Slave, and wherever a Slavic element exists in the population his influence will be dreaded in the Court, which claims that population as its subjects. On the other hand, if he is defeated, Russian patriotism, which wakes so strongly under danger, will maintain the power of the Throne, which will once more seem indispensable, and will postpone all internal questions to the revindication of the external greatness of Russia. Defeated in Europe, the Czar can always turn to Asia ; and Persia would be a prize almost worth a resuscitated Poland.
It may be doubted, too, if the Czar regards his chances in a great campaign as English observers are accustomed to do. He may not agree with Sir Charles Dilke ; but he knows that- his Army is very large. Russia has not suffered in her few contests with Germany ; and in fighting Austria she has many advantages besides the possible half-heartedness of some Austrian Slays. Her difficulty in all wars has not been to find soldiers, but to keep her masses in motion without suffering too much from her wretched commissariat, and the exceptional liability of her soldiery to die in hospital. Russian armies wither as they walk, and Turkey would have been conquered long ere this, if the Russian Generals had not been so often paralysed in the moment of victory by sheer want of men. In a war with Austria, however, Russia would be almost on her own ground ; and if she once held Galicia, could fight a defensive war, recruiting her armies incessantly from the far interior, which her enemies cannot reach. She must have at least a million of drilled men to expend, and the want of money, which did not embarrass Alexander I. in 1812, will not paralyse Alexander IIL now. Every expense can be paid for in paper-roubles except actual purchases from abroad. She could defend herself for months against Austria ; and if Germany came into the field, so must France, who is not going to leave herself for half-a-century face to face with Germany in Europe with no possible ally. The ruin of Russia is the paralysis of France ; and the Czar, knowing that, may disregard the absence of formal Conventions, or even of friendly feeling. The risk is, of course, enormous ; but an invasion of Russia is a frightful enterprise, and a Sovereign who can always retreat fights, as Englishmen were said by Lord Derby always to wish to fight, with limited liability. We, at least, can see little reason in the position of the Czar for believing that he dreads war, and none for supposing that he would threaten it as a diplomatic move.
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