THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9080, 14 June 1888, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 1888.

What a picture Europe now exhibits ! What a subject it would furnish for the scathing satire of Swift, if he could only revisit the planet, and produce another book of imaginary travels ! Europe resounding from end to end with preparations for battle; millions «of trained and armed men, more millions than wore ever in arms there before. There are at the present moment, at the lowest computation— eithor in reserve, or already in camp or barracksome seventeen millions of soldiers at the disposal of the various Governments. And what is it all for 1 The war for which all the preparation goes on may again stand postponed, but when it does come, and is fought out, who will be the better for it 1 Will the people of the victorious nations be really advantaged, although the vanquished must needs most severely suffer? Divers ' objects are . in view for the arming, and some think it necessary to arm because the rest are arming, that it would be unsafe to be out of the fashion. Now at the elose of the nineteenth century it seems there is no other way of adjusting these international quarrels and conflicting requirements than by the old expedient of war, with the preliminary armed peace, which is a costlier preparation for it than was ever known in the world before. Yes, within the last sixteen years the burden of the conscription has been enforced with a new completeness and severity. The arming of whole populations, which was a natural thing in the times of Brennus, and Alaric, and Attila, and their wild tribes, is an incongruous revival in modern civilisation with its peculiar social conditions quite unsuited to the hard sacrifices needed to make the soldier at a period when war has become so scientific. Just when education has spread through most parts of Europe, diffusing among the masses of the people new habits and powers of [ reflection, and when the battle of daily

life is in old countries more arduous than formerly, it is in most cases a great sacrifice for the young man to surrender to the duties of the camp : the first four years of his manhood. It is difficult to believe that the system can long endure. The great popular sacrifice involved by the conscription, and the tremendous taxation for the support of huge armies, enhanced by the ever-recurring changes in the fashion of firearms, must 'disgust the nations with the costly preparation which war nowadays demands— as war itself must disgust, since the longrange weapons, by squeezing the chivalry out of it, leave it mere butchery.

Of course the ambition of the nations to override each other is at the root of the mischief. The passion is as old as history, but the civilised world at last begins to feel that it is being made to pay too high a price for it. The peculiar circumstances of the period render the preparation of armies more burdensome and irksome than ever before. More and more the question popularly suggests itself, are conquests and annexation necessary to the welfare of a nation, or are they found to contribute to it 1 Russia may be regarded as the clearest modern type of aggressive force. All nations at opportunity exhibit the ambition of conquest, but with Russia it is ceaselessly displayed. The story of the will of Peter the Great may be fiction, but, all the same, the principle of continual annexation is the hereditary policy of his successors ; and though sometimes checked and driven back, they bide their time, and fail not to advance anew. The geographical position of Russia on the confines of two continents, and the barrier of defence which the Arctic winter affords to her home provinces, favour the hereditary policy of her Government. But are Russians the better for all the conquests effected by Russia 1 Her annals present an extraordinary record of territorial acquisitions. Look at all the territory south as well as north of the Baltic which she wrested from Sweden. Look at the immense tracts at both sides of the Black Sea, which she wrested from Turkey. She seized the greater part of Poland; she took from Persia her frontier provinces. All the Tartar kingdoms of Central Asia she has swallowed up or reduced to vassalage, and she has laid hands on China's border regions. But what are the Russian public the better for all these conquests The nobles ought to be the most miserable men of their class in the world, for they dare not leave their native land for pleasure or business without the permission of their Government, while at home they are subject to an irritating espionage. The peasantry only the other day were released from serfdom, and the intermediate classes are ground by taxes, and are unacquainted with citizen rights. Whatever may contribute to a nation's welfare and happiness, it is quite certain that they are not obtained through extensive conquest and annexations.

But, apart from the lust of conquest, there are such things as conflicting international interests and requirements. How are they to be adjusted and satisfied, how are such quarrels to be settled, and war prevented 1 It will be done some day by confederacy and mutual arrangement. In the last generation and the present the federal idea has rapidly grown in favour. The idea of an English-speaking confederacy has suggested the idea of a Spanish-speaking one. Lamartine wrote a book proposing such a league of the Latin nation. And if there is a Sclavic project of the kind there has been also a Scandinavian proposal. The idea fructifies, and in the next generation it is quite possible that the thing may be contemplated, perhaps realised on a still more comprehensive scale, may be made to include the civilised States of all races and languages. The Swiss Confederacy is the oldest existing one, and four languages are spoken within its bounds. Why should not Germany, France, and Italy, now threatening to come to blows, be able to settle their quarrel without fighting, just as the German, French, and Italian cantons of Switzerland are able to do 1 And as these little cantons have pulled together through a past rude age, why should not the great modern States, in a highly-civilised time, find means to settle their quarrels without fighting Even preparation for war has become such a calamity in Europe, that a confederacy of the civilised nations is likely enough in the next generation, and then any Government that would stand out as a disturbing Power would bo treated as a common enemy.