Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · February 11, 1868

The European Dead Lock.

When Mr. Puff, in Sheridan’s play of the Critic, is bringing his “Tragedy Rehearsal” to a conclusion, he makes all the characters in the scene hold their swords or daggers at each other’s breasts in such a way that none of them dare to strike for fear of being struck. Upon which he exclaims, “There’s a situation for you! There’s a heroic group! I have them all at a dead lock! For every one is afraid to let go first.” This is very much the attitude of the Great Powers of the Continent at this moment. France and Prussia are pointing their right-hand daggers at each other, while they threaten with their left, the one Italy and the other Austria, to compel their help, or at least their neutrality; while Russia holds her sword at the throat of Turkey, all ready to dispatch her as soon as the other combatants are fairly engaged; and England, by strengthening her fleet in the Mediterranean, is at least making a feint of striking at Russia should she persist in her designs on Constantinople. While thus

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,

this conflict of discords makes an ominous calm, which is but an indifferent substitute for a true peace. For this state of things is, financially and politico-economically, almost as bad as war itself. It prevents all enterprise, condemns a large proportion of the flower of the populations to the unproductive and wasteful condition of waiting for war, discourages marriage, makes capital stagnant in the vaults of the banks, and multiplies poverty and vice on every hand.

The assurances of Bonaparte and of Bismarck that there is no danger of a breach of the peace between them this year is scarcely a palliative of the mischief; for it continues the present state of doubt and distrust, which is continually making the industrial classes poorer and poorer, and crushing the poorest of all with a still more cruel weight of poverty. It were better that war should come at once, with the factitious stimulus which it always brings for the time to industry, rather than this warfare, under the mask of peace, with all the best interests of mankind. That armed hands can be held forever in this readiness to strike is impossible. Some one will think an advantage is discerned, or will be for an instant off its guard; the first blow will be struck, and the general mêlée ensue. It is a curious and a sad commentary on the boasts of modern civilization that France thinks herself obliged to take nearly a million of able-bodied men from the occupations of peace in order that she may not be obliged to go to war! And the other nations feel themselves forced thus to drain their life-blood in advance, to hinder its being spilt! Italy, which needs nothing so much as productive labor to ward off the financial crisis which threatens to overwhelm her independence—if, indeed, in her present posture as to France, she can be said to have any—has to keep between three and four hundred thousand men on foot to guard her against foreign enemies, while a large portion of her domain is virtually abandoned to the tender mercies of brigands. And so with the other continental nations; though the emancipation of the serfs in Russia and the compulsory general education of Prussia, joined to their happy freedom from the taint of Catholicism, have given to the northern tribes a hardihood of political as well as moral and physical constitution which makes their condition and prospects infinitely better than those of Bonaparte’s boasted “Latin races.” And in this posture of affairs, the petty tyrants who have been ousted of their dominions feel, as our petty despots of the plantations do in this country, that in the general confusion they have a chance to come by their own again. King Bombalino thinks he sees the road opening for his return to the throne and the prisons of Naples. The Grand Duke Ferdinand is casting hopeful eyes toward Florence and the Pitti Palace. Duke Francis of Modena and Duke Robert of Parma believe that they may yet be carried to their old dominions over the ruins of the Kingdom of Italy. And it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that all this reaction may be accomplished, should Victor Emanuel link his fortunes with Prussia, and France be more than a match for the two. This, however, is not likely to be the result of such a conflict. The map of Europe may be reconstructed; but it will more probably show all German-speaking races united under the rule of the King of Prussia, with his royal crown changed into an imperial one, and Victor Emanuel enshroned in the Eternal City. It will be a change for the better, as it will strengthen Protestantism as against Catholicism, and constitutional government as against the personal despotism of France.

If we are wise in this country, this European complication will only work for our good. We have only to pursue the things that make for peace, to build up our waste places, to maintain our honor and credit, to relieve our industries from all burdens which our honor and credit do not make imperative, to revive our old energy and enterprise, and the disturbance of Europe will only help us to recover our old prosperity. We can hold our former rank among the nations in material success, as we have bettered it as to our military strength. If we can avoid, wisely, a Dead Lock on this side the Atlantic, we shall be able to turn that on the other to our own advantage, and, by our example, to that of the whole world.—Independent.