Europe’s Anxiety Over Slavic Conflict
—Commenting on General Skobeloff's recent speech in Paris, in which he declared that Russia had been held in check by Germany, and that a long and terrible conflict between the Slavs and the Teutons was inevitable, the Christian Weekly of March 4 says: “While to the casual observer there may seem to be general amity and concord between the nations of Europe, it is really but little more than an armistice, and they are in fact reposing on the surface of a volcano that may at any time burst its crust. It seems strange that a single sentence of a single man, unofficial and uninspired by high authority, should send alarm throughout the continent.” Judging from very recent dispatches, Europe is not convinced that these inflammatory remarks were the utterances of a “single man, unofficial and uninspired by high authority.” General Skobeloff has been called home; but it is rumored that his brother-in-law is continuing the agitation in Paris, and the fires of rebellion are burning in the heart of the Russian Slav, “The Slavs claim that they number 87,000,000, and the dread of their uniting against the other races is the nightmare of Europe. The fear, not altogether causeless, of a formidable Mohammedan revival in a rapidly approaching epoch of their faith, adds to the ill-concealed anxiety of those who are in the high places of power.”