THE YEAR IN EUROPE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 10, 1878

THE YEAR IN EUROPE.

THERE have been two struggles in Europe this year—one a peaceful, the other a bloody struggle—in which Americans have been profoundly interested. Their sentiments of humanity were outraged by the massacres of Christians in Turkey, which the Porte was either powerless or disinclined to prevent, and their attachment to republican institutions made them anxious for the triumph of republicanism in France. The results of both these campaigns are of a satisfactory character. It is not, in the case of the Eastern war, that we love the cause of Russia; but that of the Christian provinces, whose highest interests hinge upon the success of the Czar. The triumph of Turkey would be a blow to civilization and humanity. But of this there appears to be no imminent danger. The Russians have gained, in the short campaign following the declaration of war in April, all that they could have reasonably expected to gain. They have made themselves masters, virtually, of Armenia, and only need Erzeroum and Trebizond, which are surely in their reach, to make the conquest of this province complete. The capture of Kars, the most strongly fortified place in Asiatic Turkey, was an admirable piece of strategy, brilliantly executed, and it robbed one of the ablest of the Turkish generals, Mahktar, of his newly-invested title of “Ghazi.”

But the greatest blow to the Turks and the most important victory to the Russians was the fall of Plevna, in Bulgaria. Captured easily, early in the campaign, the Russians lost it through lack of generalship, and Osman Pasha took possession of it and showed what military skill and indomitable courage could do to defend a position which had hardly any natural advantages. And Osman might still have been master of Plevna if the Grand Duke’s disease had not been arrested in its course sufficiently to allow a great military engineer, Gen. Todleben, to plan the campaign against the town. In its fall Turkey was seriously crippled. The Turks not only lost an army of upward of 30,000 men, with immense military stores; but they lost the last tenable position in Bulgaria west of the quadrilateral, and exposed Adrianople, and even Constantinople itself, to Russian incursions. The quadrilateral is now menaced in the investment of Rustchuk, against which a most formidable array of artillery is trained. The great army which invested Plevna is now left free to operate against the Turkish forces on the Lom; which will undoubtedly retire to Shumla or Rasgrad, within the quadrilateral.

The Turkish armies, both in Europe and Asia, have few or no advantages. They cannot move without danger of being checkmated, and can hardly hope to retrieve what they have lost, in the next year’s campaign, if peace should not intervene. There are evidences that the Porte is heartily tired of the war, and would be glad to put an end to it, if it could be done without sacrificing too much. Russia, which is now in a position to enforce its demands, would not be satisfied, probably, with less than the secured autonomy of the Christian provinces of Europe, free navigation of the Black Sea and the Bosphorus, and a strip of Armenia, to strengthen its southwestern frontier and to give it more sea-coast. The prospect is that there will be mediation between the two powers, and a proclamation of peace before next spring.

In France the singular spectacle has

been presented of a republic with an anti-republican administration. The course of Marshal MacMahon since May, when he dissolved the Chamber of Deputies, on the plea that the ascendency of Radicalism was becoming dangerous to the stability of the government and the peace and welfare of the people, has seemed to English and American observers to tend toward the overthrow of the republic, and the re-establishment of a monarchy, of which a parallel is furnished in the case of Spain. No one feared for Spain or France either while the government of the former was in the hands of Castelar and that of the latter in those of Thiers. But Marshal Serrano, succeeding to Castelar, betrayed the republic and restored the Bourbon monarchy; and Marshal MacMahon has seemed to be ready to murder the liberties of France in the same way. But, happily, the republic was too strong and the plot against it has failed.

After using to the utmost every legitimate advantage possessed by the government to influence the new elections, and after muzzling the press and leaders of the Republican party in a way that would hardly be permitted in despotic Russia, the Marshal and his party, with all the support the church could give them, met with an overwhelming defeat. Then it became a personal question with MacMahon whether to adopt the alternative—which Gambetta prophetically declared would be presented by the result of the elections, and for which he was arrested and tried—submit or resign. He tried for a while to avoid the question; but his own party and the conservative senate refused longer to support his obstinate opposition, and he has at last surrendered, and for the remaining two years of his septennate must be guided by the will of the people, who have definitely and decidedly declared that the government of France shall be a republic.

The Independent.