THE STATE OF EUROPE.

Evening Star, Issue 3872, 22 July 1875, Page 3

THE STATE OF EUROPE.

The London * Spectator ’ sums up the piesent state of affairs in Europe in language which is almost solemn : The social disturbance in Russia, a disturbance marked, we are told, by an inclination to threaten the rich a.d to commit violent crime, is on the increase; the finances are believed to be in grave disorder ; the army, in spite of desperate efforis, is not fully reorganised; the Asiatic proviso: s are honeycombed with discontent and infested by a corruption with which the Czar, however willing, is unable to contend. In Germony—so recently elevated to the top of the world—all classes, except perhaps the great military officers, are ill at ease. The statesmen fear that too much rests upon Bismarck’s single life. All classes but the Junkets are opposed to the iron rigidity with which military service is demanded. A thinly-veiled religious war is raging in half of the provinces of the Empire. Thirteen-millions —one third of the people—are mortified by attacks on their creed, sanctioned with exultation by another twothirds, while these two-thirds are disquieted by thoughts of a possible retribution, in fear of which they every day demand stronger and stronger measures of prevention. In Denmark a semi-political, semi-social war is raging between the proprietors and the peasantry, in which neither side will give way. In Scandinavia, the upper daises, who watch the situation of their country with alarm, dreading Germany as much as they ever dreaded Russia, seem unable, even with the Government at tueir back, to reorganieo the army they consider essential to their freedom. In Austria the doubtfu' experiment of dual government is about to be revised ; there is universal suffering under a financial cris’s, and there is a growing perception that the very safety of the State is menaced by pecuniary corruption. In Tur key bankruptcy is rapidly coming on, the conflict between the Empire and the vassal princes grows daily sharper, and the Government seems to vacillate between an impulse towards despairing such as diminishing Grand Viziers on demand from abroad, and releasing Mussulman fanaticism for that sanguinary struggle in which, true to the law of its being, it should one day expire, in France the whole energies of a great people are taxed to bear, without glory, new military burdens, to pay for the exp.-uses of a lost war, and to establish a system of government which shall admit cf incessant change and yet be permanent. The conviction that another dreadful war must come weighs upm all miuds, aud it is not accompanied by the usual conviction that it will to euccessfuL Europe for agi-s has had no parallel for the condition of Spain, has seen no people in a condition which seemed to themselves and others so nearly to justify despair. la Belgium the religious strife divides the towns from the country, the Flemings from the Belgians, the parties from each other, till, if Belgium, were Spain, and therefore isolated from Europe, it might be the scetio of a raging religions war. The United Kingdom, it is true, is tranquil, except Ireland ; and Italy, except in the old kingdom of the two S : cilies, within which social order dees not exist; but the two exceptions in each case are sufficient to cause perpetual anxieties, not diminished in either by a sense of inadequate military strength, which yet cannot apparently be increased. Outside Germany the nations certainly look to no one, but wait on circumstances, listen with the expectation at once of lassitude and fear for something which does not happen, but seems always at hand. It may be war, it may bo a religious revival, it may be a new creed, it may be merely a new discovery in physics; but there is a sense that something is at hand, fer which all who wait must w’i it in irritable patience.