RUMORS OF WAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 14, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 39.

RUMORS OF WAR.

RUMORS of war are again heard from Europe. Russia, it is asserted, is negotiating an enormous loan, and that the money thus raised will be wholly applied to naval and military purposes. At least 70,000,000 roubles will be expended in increasing the navy, and the remainder in enlarging and strengthening frontier fortifications, and in purchasing magazine rifles for the army. It is also stated that a second line of rails is to be laid from the interior of Russia to the western frontier, and that three hundred locomotives and a large quantity of rails have been purchased to be delivered next May.

Of course this does not mean immediate war; it is now too late in the season for Russia to think of opening hostilities; but it does indicate that it is the settled purpose of the czar to extend his empire southward. He covets Constantinople, and sooner or later he will take it.

In discussing this matter, a leading secular paper on this coast says:—

"There can be no other purpose than a warlike one in making this loan. Russia has not taken up the plan of making extensive internal improvements; she has conceived no design of a general system of education; she has not entered upon the pathway of colonization, and there is no foreign territory which she is seeking to purchase. Her finances have improved so materially of late that such a loan is not a necessity to clear off old scores, and so the loan resolves itself into a war measure.

"These rumors, even though they may be nothing more, cannot fail to excite much apprehension in Europe. And one can imagine the feeling of anxiety which will hang over Europe during the entire winter, caused by the belief that with the opening spring the Muscovite millions will sweep down from the north and lay waste the fairest portions of Europe. Where the blow will fall, none can tell; but unless all signs are to go for nothing, and unless the best military critics in Europe are deceived, the spring of 1890 will see a war begun by Russia, and when begun it can hardly fail to become general in its character."