CHANCES OF WAR IN EUROPE. (From the Daily Times, April 3.)

Otago Witness, Issue 697, 8 April 1865, Page 1

CHANCES OF WAR IN EUROPE. (From the Daily Times, April 3.)

Is it true that Europe is likely to be plunged into a general war? Such has been the confident prediction of political seers during the whole of the years that have succeeded the last French revolution, and the forced pacification that followed it. Almost every mail has brought us the ominoiis intimation that Europe was "on the eve" ot an outburst to which it was impissiWe to assign limits, and which was destined to decompose all existing political elements and recombine them in new forms of national life. At intervals appearances have been promising of such results. Hungary, Poland, Italy, and Denmark have in succession presented themselves as very likely causes of a general conflagration. But it is a remarkable fact that in each instance, whilst political sympathies were very powerfully enlisted on one side or the other, and when the great powers were in a state of armed preparation unprecedented in any former period of history, the several problems thus raised were solved on the narrow fields within whose limits they first arose. Hungary and Poland have been defeated each on its own soil. On its own soil again Italy has been victorious. The quarrel between Denmark and Germany was confined to the two principals to it. In all these cases, which suggested the "strongest probability of a general European War, that great evil has been averted, and we believe we are justified in deducing from the history of the last fifteen years, the conclusion that other influences are at work for the settlement of what have hitherto been questions of international strife, apart from armed force. If this conjecture be sustained, an immense good will result to humanity in the saving of life, the economy of treasure, and the uninterrupted progress of the processes of civilization.

From various motives of policy and prudence, the old military powers of Europe have committed themselves generally to the principle of non-intervention. Russia, it is true, helped Austria to crush Hungary ; the allied Western powers fought a bloody campaign for the protection of the Turkish Monarchy ; and more recently, France sent her legions to fight for Italy on the plains of Magenta and Solferino. But this brief campaign of Lombardy appears to have closed the old system. There has been no " intervention" since, though the temptations have been numerous, and almost irresistable. After the toleration given to the excesses of the Russians in Poland, and the inaction of Prance and England in the case of Denmark, at a time, when each power had a B great army and navy unemployed — it is difficult to resist the conclusion that a fiat has gone forth against war, and that the day has at length come when this curse of peoples ■shall be superseded by new and less pernicious forces.

War has reached the climax of its horrors in the American States. A butchery unexampled, a devastation more destructive than stands on record of any other war compressed into so brief a limit of time, might appropriately finish a tale of blood and violence. It is, indeed, well fitted to constitute the culminating point of a story of horrors. In Europe the indications appear unmistakeable that the game of war is tired of. Its bases have always been disputed questions of territory and powers. Is it rash to assume that the strong national instincts that are now developing themselves throughout Europe, are more powerful than armies, and are giving an impetus to the course of history so irresistible that no armies could check it ? In Italy we see the most signal illustration of the new movement — and the unifaction of Italy is a work which the world has viewed with mingled feelings of admiration and wonder.

It would indeed be strange if the moral forces which are asserting themselves in the internal life of nations, failed to realise a larger development. Since the close of the Napoleonic war — and especially since the era of the Reform Bill— English society, for instance, has undergone a revolution more complete than any of the great convulsions through which its civil wars have carried it. In its old struggles it circumscribed the powers of Kings, secured the political liberties of the people, surrounded the rights of conscience with sure guarantees, and established the broad foundations of Constitutional Government. Its latest revolution has borne fruits

richer than all these, in the reconciliation of classes, and the fusion of the whole elements of society into one firm and compactjmass. What a wide chasm separates modern England from the England of the days of the Peterloo massacre, of the antimachinery riots, of the agrarian outrages that belonged to the early days of the Corn Laws ! The trade of the demagogue has ceased. Seditious agitation has become a thoroughly bankrupt speculation. There is no longer a war of classes, because rights are mutually understood and con ceded. Is it wrong to attribute to this revolution in the interior national life, the growth of that pacific sentiment which has ceased to find gratification in the glories of war, and which checks the old haste with which the sword was resorted to ? And is it wrong to assume that a corresponding development of pacific tendencies in other countries, has something to do with the long avoidance of that general war which has been so loudly but so falsely predicted? Throughout Europe, the force of nationalities is asserting itself. Geographical boundaries are more and more ceasing to be of political importance, except so far as they mark out the natural territories of races. Metternich once said of Italy that it was only " a geographical expression." The sajing belonged to the ideas of European politics of his day. Italy has become, a political unity from. the identity of race of its peoples. All the systems of empire that have been built upon the basis of a forced subjection of peoples, seem crumbling. Sovereignties and governments are establishing themselves upon new and more natural foundations. Whatever sacrifices war might entail upon the world by its intervention, it could not permanently check the new forces that are at work. And nothing will more tend to destroy war, than the practical demonstration of its uselessness.