THE FUTURE OF EUROPE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 197, 12 January 1877, Page 13

THE FUTURE OF EUROPE.

The ' Voce della Verita' speaks of the present state of things in Turkey aud of the prospects o£ Europe as follows :—: — ° Turkey menaced thus seriously, and we may also say unjustly, will, it cannot be doubted, be driven to extreme resolutions, and will determine to sell her life dearly. She will proclaim a holy war for the salvation of Islam. She will make an appeal to Moslem fanaticism, and will call to her assistance the populations, her coreligionists, of Asia, Africa and the Indies. Who can fail to see what the first results of Buch a war of religion and of races would be for the unliappy Christians of every denomination who are disseminated in the midst" of the Mussulman population ? And the extermination which they will have to suffer they will owe to Muscovite philanthropy. It is time that the Russian and Russianising press should cease this stupid attempt to make the world believe that Russia is irresistibly attracted to the acquisition of preponderating power on the Bo3phorus, not by ambition, but solely by a desire for the liberation of the Christiana from the Turkish yoke and the amelioration of the lot of the Sclavs ! Ruasia enamoured by the cause of the Sclavs ! Russia, who has made Poland — the brightest creation of the Sclav genius — a land of malediction and weeping ! What ! Russia protectress of Christians against Mussulman barbarism ? Russia, who suffocates the Catholics of her own empire in blood, in outrage, and in violence, and sends them to die of starvation and misery in Siberia? What! Russia turned humanitarian! Russia, whose history is one long story of bloodshed ! Russia ! who officially brutalizes her population with aqua vita, who murders her Czars, who was the other day sowing broadcast in Central Asia sackings, burnings, and massacres, in comparison with which the famous atrocities in Bulgaria will pale ! The 'Voce' concludes its article with the following outlook into the future : — The provinces of the Ottoman Empire, we are told, will be divided, and in the division of the spoil compensations will be found which will restore a durable peace to Europe after the Mussulman shall have been driven out of it. Bub it is exactly this question of the division of the booty which will cause the war for the destruction of Turkey to be succeeded by other wars far longer and more terrible. For these wars will also readily become wars of religion— no longer between Christians and Mussulmans, but between Catholicity, which would raise its banner of popular liberty, and the pagan Cje3arism, which has been born again, with its despotism and its slavery badly concealed in the folds of the Lutheran and schismatic Greek banners. Are we looking too far ahead ? But this is the natural and logical evolution of the events towards which Europe is advancing. It is true that God's providence, which in our estimate of probabilities we do not forget, may still bring to pass unforseen events capable of changing the entire face of things. An internal revolution in Russia or in Germany, the death of a single man, the abdication of an Emperor, now again much talked of, or some other unforseen event, or the sudden arrangement of unexpected alliances, may easily overturn all the calculations of human policy. We can, therefore, but repeat the words of Pio Nono — "Let us await events" which are maturing themselves more rapidly than many people imagine.