THE 'SITUATION' OF EUROPE.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 417, 22 October 1861, Page 3

THE 'SITUATION' OF EUROPE.

The Opinion Nationale y already alluded to, after enumerating the elements of possible trouble in Europe, and which it considers to constitute ' a state of things sufficiently delicate to demand al! the attention of governments, and all the skill of diplomatists,' sums up its appreciation of the • situation ' as follows :—

♦In Russia, sixty millions of men, who may be plunged in a civil war in three months. In the centre of our continent, twelve millions of Polish Slavonians, awaiting only a propitious moment to reconquer their national independence ;—

'In Austria, fourteen millions of Slavonians (Tcheques, Moravians, Slovacks, Ruthenians, Slovans, Croats, and Servians), five and a half millions of Magyars, two and a half millions of Roumans, three millions of Venetians, Frisulians, and Ladins, all bent upon the destruction of the power of the Hapsburgs ; — 'In Turke}% twelve millions of Christians in a state of permanent revolt against the Turks, whom they desire to drive back into Asia ;• — ' In Italy, a state of things full of peril, and twenty-five millions of men whose eyes are turned towards Rome and Venice. ' We have thus 130 millions of men in Europe, ready to fly to arms; but it is no longer the barbarous instinct of fighting for fighting's sake that animates the nations. They are rising in the name of nationality, renovation, and progress, and we can already foresee, beyond the atmosphere of clouds and tempest that now surrounds us, the approach of an era of political and social development more brilliant than any period witnessed by our forefathers.'