Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, October 8, 1867

The Impending War in Europe.

A GREAT war in Europe is inevitable. Those who place the slightest trust in the assurances of peace which the rival governments are continually making, forget the maxim of Talleyrand, that the use of speech is the concealment of thought. Those who choose to take the word of a French or Prussian Minister, forget that truth is one especial virtue which a continental statesman cannot afford to practice. All great wars in Europe have begun with proclamations of peace, so that the very phrase of “international amity” sounds like the report of a gun. The nearer the war the more earnest are the protestations of good will; and the governments remind us of prize-fighters who, just before they beat each other to jelly, exchange the warmest hand-shakings and most cordial smiles. We have had more than one instance in this generation, of royal rulers congratulating their subjects upon the prospect of long and happy peace at the very moment when they were preparing their armies to invade somebody else’s territory. “France desires peace; all her interests are bound up in undisturbed commerce, manufacture and art. She will make any sacrifice to avoid war.” This is the manner in which the Emperor talked at Amiens. “I have crossed France with the Empress from Strasburg to Dunkirk, and our hearty and sympathetic reception everywhere, has filled us with the liveliest gratitude. Nothing, I perceive with pleasure, can shake the confidence which for 20 years, the French people have placed in me. They have estimated at their real value the difficulties I have had to surmount. The ill success of our policy across the ocean has not diminished the prestige of our arms, since everywhere the valor of our soldiers overcame all opposition. The events accomplished in Germany have not caused our country to depart from a calm and dignified attitude, and it relies with justice on the maintenance of peace.” Yet all this reliance upon the perpetuity of peace did not prevent Napoleon from buying iron-clad war vessels in America to increase a navy already superior to that of England. Nor did it put a stop to the unusual activity in re-organizing, drilling and arming every branch of the military service. The camps of France are as busy as her manufactories. Immediately after the triumph of Prussia, measures were taken to organize the army on a basis of 800,000 men. Prussia, equally emphatic in her protestations, has been as significant in her actions. The avowed policy of Bismark is the consolidation of the North German States into one great military power, of which Prussia shall be the head, and it is notorious that his schemes have for their immediate object the detaching of the South German States from the influence of Austria. France is arming; Prussia is arming; the needle-gun is to be met with the Chassepot rifle. Austria is sacrificing the hereditary policy of the House of Hapsburg to gain—what she has never had—the effective support of Hungary, and an assurance that Hungarian troops could be depended upon in battle.

Italy, and even Switzerland, are adding to their materials of war, while that vast and semi-barbaric power which overhangs Western Europe like a threatening cloud, has already announced that the Sultan must revolutionize the whole system of his government. Every movement of Russia against Turkey has been the prelude to a great continental struggle, and, of all her movements, the late demand is the boldest. And war does not result from the action of the Czar, as much as his action is governed by his knowledge of the future. Peace may be preserved by a miracle—but miracles are very rare in politics; and if there is any significance in facts, the editor of this paper was right when he lately gave his opinion, in his Paris correspondence, that war was the settled purpose of the European Powers, and that France and Prussia would meet on new battle-fields before next spring. The music of festivities and the songs of peace are heard throughout Europe; but beneath their rejoicing strains is heard the far sound of trumpets, and the roll of approaching drums. The silence is like that of a bright morning when two great armies meet, and, while the birds sing and the bees hum in the clover, await for a few brief moments the command to fire and the word to charge along the line.—Wilkes' Spirit.