The Unrest of the Nations

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 26, 1907

The Unrest of the Nations

FROM an editorial in the Independent of recent date, entitled “The Unrest of the Nations,” we quote:—

Like a political influenza, a general popular unrest and dissatisfaction seems to be passing over the world. It is far more general than the extraordinary uprising of 1848, for that was confined to Europe; the present disturbance seems to cover the whole Eastern continent and to threaten the Western.

Let the reader take his map of the world and pass his eye from one great nation to another and observe how wide is the disaffection. There is Russia, which covers half of Europe and a third of Asia. The people hate their government, and are devising ways to get rid of their czar and create a really free nation. A whole nation is in rebellion. Then go south, and you come to China, just now hastening to reverse its whole theory of civilization, and face the West instead of the East. It is not the mere introduction of railroads and telegraphs and motor-cars; it is far more than that. It is the new education, the new patriotism, the new will to be strong, as Germany

and Japan are strong, and then to submit to no foreign dictation. Perhaps the greatest event of the present half-century is to be the renaissance of China, for that will change the balance of the world.

Then look south again to India. We do not wonder that Great Britain is concerned for her empire. Her chief thought now is of the unrest in India. What does it mean? What will it do? India does not love the nation that has united it, and given it civilization and education and peace and prosperity quite equal to the best it has ever had, and that notwithstanding famines and plagues. The Hindus are waking up to the fact that they do not rule, but are ruled, and they are meeting in congresses, and public speakers are haranguing the people, telling them that India is for the Indians; and they boycott British goods and repeat their cries of liberty and patriotism and hatred of the ruling power. The air is electric, and General Kitchener holds his army in readiness for something that may be more general and more dangerous than the Sepoy Rebellion.

And so we might go over the whole map. Even Persia demands a new constitution. We begin to see the same unrest in Egypt; and South Africa is trying uncertainly to adapt itself to new conditions, not yet knowing whether the Briton or the Boer is to rule, and both looking askance at the black peril. In Europe, France questions whether her government is truly free, and was greatly startled the other day when it appeared that the army was untrustworthy, and that there had been mutiny in various regiments. Not in France alone, but in Germany, in Italy, in Austria, in Belgium, in Holland, in England, the new political doctrine of socialism is undermining the governments, threatening their constitutions, and proving that the common people are dissatisfied with the way they are ruled, and are seeking a new liberty. In Great Britain, Ireland is demanding more than her friends can give her as yet, and the British House of Commons has spoken the ominous threat that it will not longer consent to be ruled by rich men whose titles and right to govern come to them by birth. Even in America we see clear signs of the same coming unrest, in the determination that combinations of wealth shall not rule the land. White workmen in the North and black workmen in the South demand their own.

The author then attributes this unrest to the education of the people as to their rights; but, while observing men may profess to see a reason for existing conditions, such statements as the above are an evidence of the fulfilment of the Saviour’s prediction that after the “signs in sun and moon and stars” there should be “upon the earth distress of nations, in perplexity . . . men fainting for fear, and for expectation of the things which are coming on the world.” Let us not forget that the angels are “holding the four winds of the earth, that no wind should blow on the earth, or on the sea, or upon any tree . . . till we shall have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.”