There mustle a deep-rooted fear of coming social change Austria,
or the Pesther-Lloyd, perhaps the ablest news- paper in the Empire, would not use the strange arguments with which it defends the present enormous armaments. They are, it says, according to the Times' correspondent,
• absolutely necessary, but not for international reasons. -There is hardly any risk of war, but it is the armies which 'keep down the otherwise certain social convulsions. There is, it continues, a blind hatred of civilisation in the souls of millions, and but for the soldiers they would seize the weapons of destruction, and dominate the world with dyna- mite. Is that not rather too sombre a picture of European society, even at this moment ? The Nihilists are but a minute section of society in Russia ; in France, M. Raynal has cast his net wide and only caught 2,000 men ; the Anarchists in Germany, if distinguished from the Socialists, can hardly be more numerous than in France ; in Austria they are constantly arrested without any visible protest from the people ; and in England, if a great crime were committed by them, the very loafers of the pavement would be at their throats. The writer in the Pesther-Lloyd forgets, like many other writers, the enormous force which lies sleeping
in the quiet multitude who never shout at meetings, who like " progress" in a vague way better than stagnation, but who have not the slightest intention that either property or the payment of wages should come to an end. We do not under- rate the usefulness of the soldiery in checking rioting, but society rests upon a stronger foundation than the bayonet— the determination of the immense majority not to leap off a precipice into the unknown. Very few men conceive of a heaven to be found by going downwards.
Previous page
