THE STATE OF EUROPE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume X, Issue 135, 7 June 1875, Page 2

THE STATE OF EUROPE.

The London Spectator sums op the present 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 and to commit violent crime, is on the increase; the finances are believed to be in grave disorder} the army, in apve of desperate efforts, is not fully reorganised: the Asiatic provinces are honeycombed with discontent and iafeated by a corruption with which the Tsar, however willing, is unable to contend. In Germany —-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. AW classes but the Junkers are oppressed by the iron rigidity with which military service is demanded. A thinly-veiled religiouß war is raging in half of thd provinces of the Empire. Thirteen millions — one third of the people —are morhfied by attacks upon their creed, sanctioned with exultation by another two-thirds while these two thirds are disquieted by the thoughts of a possible retribution, in fear of which they every day demand stronger and stronger measures of prevention. In Denmark a semipolitical, semi-social war is raging between the proprietoisand the peasantry, in which neither side will give way. In Scandintivia, the upper classes, 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 their back, to reorganise the army they consider essential to their freedom. In Austria the ♦ doubtful experiment' of dual Government is about to be revised; there is universal suffering under a financial crisis, and there is a growing perception that the very safety of the State ia menaced by pecuniary corruption. la Turkey bankruptcy is rapidly coming on, the conflict, between the Empire and thevasshl primes grows daily sharper, and the Govern meut aeems to vacillate between an impulse towards despairiug concessions, such as dimioiehing 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 burdeDS, to pay for the expenses of a lost war, and to establish a system of government which shall admit of incessant change and yet be permanent. The conviction ihnt another dreadful war must come weighs upon all minds, and it is not accompanied by the usual conviotion that it will be successful. Europe for ages has had no parallel for the condition of Spain, has seen no people in a condition which seemed to themselves and others bo nearly to justify despair. In Belgium the religious strife divides the towns from the country, the Flemings from the Belgians, the parties from each other, till, if Be'gium were Spain, and therefore isolated from Europe, it might be the scene of a raging religious war. The United Kingdom, it is true, is tranquil, except Ireland; and Ituly, except in the old kingdom of the two Siciliee, within which social order does not exist; but the two exceptions in each case ore sufficient to cause perpetual anxieties, not diminished in either by a sense of inadequate military streugth, 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 the something which does not happen, but seems always at hand. It may be war, it may be 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, for which all who wait must wait in irritable patience.