Europe's Alarm Over the Russian Nihilist Crisis
Europe is not an uninterested spectator of the Russian crisis. Consternation, not indifference, is the word to express the predominant feeling. Telegrams from the various capitals reveal the state of apprehension into which the crowned heads have fallen as they have got a glimpse of the specter of the secret Nihilist conspiracy of Russia. Even England is said to be anxious to an unusual degree, so much so that Sir Robert Peel, in the house of Commons, two weeks since, asked whether the British Government would take steps “in the interests of humanity to mitigate the horrors and atrocities amid which the reign of terror is now being carried on in Russia over eighty millions of people.” In no more accurate terms can a person, looking on the state of the world to-day, describe the scene, than those in which it was foretold by the lips of our great Prophet more than eighteen hundred years ago—“Distress of nations with perplexity.”