EUROPEAN PROSPECTS.

Grey River Argus, Volume XIV, Issue 1785, 25 April 1874, Page 2

EUROPEAN PROSPECTS.

[MELBOURNE ARGUS.] The letters of our French and German correspondents give a vivid picture of the present aspect of affairs in continental Earope. All the moving scenes, the busy life, the fluctuations, and the vast concerns of the old world are faithfully photographed, so to speak, and held up to onr view. And what a picture it is ! Prom one of Europe to the other there are the restless movements, the preparatory musteringa of armed legions, and the profound popular disquiet that invariably precede and foretell a mighty convulsion. The great powers to the east of the Continent are gathering huge armies, numbering in the aggregate eight millions of fighting men. Immens fleets cover the seas in all directions, and everywhere the national arsenals resound with the hammers of multitudes of ship-builders. That heavenly millennium of peace,, which certain eager enthusiasts were erewhile confidently predicting as at the world's very doors, seems now further off than ever ; aud all passing events point rather to the ever-lessening interval that separates it from what interpreters of Apocalypse are wont to designate the Great Battle of Armageddon. Conspicuous amongst these "giantforms of empires," each on its separate way to conquest or collapse, towers the colossal figure of Russia. Her attitude at the moment, as the graphic pen of our German correspondent depicts it, is very significant and arresting. On the one side she is courting Germany, cocuietting with Austria, and binding; England to herself in the fraternal bonds of a marriage between the two Royal households, whilst on the other side she id silently menacing Turkey. An army of three millions of fighting men is being gradually but systematically gathered, with the avowed purpose of carrying out her ulterior designs, whatever those may be. She is evidently bent on becoming mistress of the situation in Europe, as she already is in Central Asia, but the exact course of future events on the former continent lies quite beyond the reach of human forecasting. No man living can tell, as our correspondent expresses it, " when and where the flames will burst out of the the quaking ground." All that can safely be predicted is, that as the political soil of the entire region is even now visibly moving in volcanic throes, an early eruption and of unusual magnitude may certainly be expected. In the meantime, the two great powers in the West — England and France — are both too busily occupied with their domestic affairs to have much leisure for attending to foreign complications. France, however, will be ready to throw herself into the conflict whenever it arises, and whatever may be her state of preparation, and England will require all the atate-craft she possesses to keep out of it. There is something specially noteworthy in the tone adopted towards England by the Russian official journals. It is to the last degree "sweetly reasonable' 3 — as MiMatthew Arnold would phrasa it — and softly conciliatory.. Our German correspondent has translated for us the deliverance of the St. Petersburg Cowt •Journal on the marriage of the Princess Marie. Itisasfull of honeyed phrases as the finest court lady could desire ; apologises gently for England's little misconception — which, after all, wa3 only I natural in a time of great artificial excitement — in the matter of the Crimean war ; complains mildly of tho unwarranted misapprehensions to which poor Russia was subjected in that business ; and with blended affectionateness and courage, affirms that, however fiercely the statesmen of the two countries may heve quarrelled, the nations themselves never felt a single moment's hatred towards one another. Those quarrelsome statesmen had certainly much to answer for. But then, a3 one knows, both Palmerston and Gortschakoff are dead, and retrospective

blame lies lighbly on the ashes of a departed diplomatist. Englishmen may therefore accept as they please the loving assurances of the St. Petersburg Court Circular. The prospect of a collision in Europe between the two countries now so happily united by a matrimonial alliance is, let us hope, remote. We have repeatedly expressed in these columns our belief that on the Asiatic side' there are.no great reasons for anticipating a rupture between England and Russia. This conviction is well sustained by a volume which the present English mail has just brought to hand. It contains a translation into our own language of the Russian official defence and apology for the conquest of Central Asia. And the tenor of the defence and apology is exactly such as we had anticipated. It amounts to this : — Russia, in subjugating the wild and barbarous peoples of Central Asia to her sway, has done no more than England has done in India. Her mission, exactly the same as that of England in the East, is to supplant barbarism and paganism by civilisation and Christianity. A large and populous empire requires a wide extent of territory, and free access to an extensive seabordj as indispensable conditions of. her ever enlarging trade and commerce. And chiefly, it lay to the hand of Russia to extirpate • slavery and its abominable practices from Central Asia, just as it was the self-iaiposed task of England to suppress the slave traffic in Africa. Nothing will induce Russia, protests the official apologist, to endure the scoffs of a half-savage Khan, who oppresses in captivity Russian prisoners dragged to Khiva by the robber Turkomans, and Khirghiz. And then the cruelties perpetrated by the bloodthirsty Tekke tribes on their poor Persian captives are such as to make humanity shudder. Why, therefore, should not Russia interpose in the interests of mere humanity, never to speak of those higher consideration that always justify the conquest of barbarous tribes by their civilised neighbors 1 The defence, we must allow, is excellent, and the tv quoqiw to England is fair sarcasm.