Russia Arming | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 5, 1871

Russia Arming.

RUSSIA is said to be arming herself swiftly and powerfully at every point. Immense supplies of machinery, steam boilers, and wire rigging, have been sent to the Southern ports. Cronstadt is being strengthened, and engineers are laying out new lines of defense in various quarters. Meanwhile the regiments of the line are at work in competitive rifle shooting, the cavalry and artillery are being remodeled on improved principles, and all these things are being pushed with the utmost dispatch. Can it be that Russia doubts the good faith of Prussia? or is it that she dreads her power? That one or both these suppositions is true, there can be little doubt. It is said that a profound dread of a fresh uprising in Poland, a universal insurrection, devised and prompted by German publicists, and backed by German bayonets, is the true secret of all these formidable preparations. The explanation is plausible as regards the Western frontier, but scarcely accounts for the vast operations in progress on the Black Sea.

It is not to be denied that the relative position of Russia in Europe is seriously modified by late events—events that have placed the control of more than a million and a half of splendid soldiers, flushed with victory, at the uncontrolled disposition of a single power, and almost of a single will. At the same time it suggests but a sad prospect for the people, this bristling into war-like panoply of one great military power in the East the moment the great military power of the West has been struck down. There is nothing, it would seem, but fighting, or preparing to fight, and the accumulation of huge debts, that labor at last is called on to pay, to be looked for while present dynasties subsist and confront each other. Time will show what is to come of the czar’s gigantic preparations, but at present they have every indication of being forerunners of a conflict beside which the Crimean war will seem comparatively trivial, and which may have a greater effect on the future of Europe than even the dreadful contest the thunder of which has only just passed away.—N. Y. Times.