PARIS, _April 20, 1893_.
Let me say, at the very start, that it is imperative not to forget
the date which heads this article. This date has a significance of
the highest importance, for it marks the opening of a new era.
The political situation of Europe is to-day widely different from
what it was only yesterday. Yesterday the entire world turned an
eye feverishly intent towards Belgium, upon the spectacle there of
the decisive struggle between an established government and an
unestablished proletariat. There was to be seen in Belgium the
constitutional authority of an entire realm, backed by the force of
arms, opposed by a militant labor democracy. On the one side,
law, authority, armed force; on the other, lack of authority, of
capital, and of arms; in a word, vague nothingness struggling
against omnipotence. Yet it is the former that has won the day.
Omnipotence has belied its name, and has been driven to the wall;
the defeat has been crushing. But more than this, it has been
significant. I repeat, it marks the opening of a new era.
For the world-wide association of laborers now comprehends that it
holds the Old World in its hands. It has discovered the invincible
power of the strike, in obedience to the watchword emanating from its
irresponsible leaders. Here is a force which is negative, perhaps, but
one against which nothing henceforth can prevail. Lo, a silent word of
command, and the towers of Jericho fall! Before a general strike of
this sort the Old World is to-day powerless, like the child at the
breast to whom the mother refuses to give suck.
This is a fact so big with suggestion, so sudden, so almost
terrifying, that it changes all our former points of view. I could
not have written yesterday what I can write to-day; for when I saw
unexpectedly breaking out "the troubles in Belgium," I could not but
postpone till all was over the writing of the article for which I had
been asked. No one has as yet fairly grappled with the meaning of the
new social pact prepared in mystery, a pact of which the dark
elaboration had been only suspected, but which has just become so
startlingly revealed. The idea of the strike as applied to political
problems upsets all preconceived notions. What has hitherto been
regarded as the only real force is now as if paralyzed; instead,
sheer, silent will-power remains the only sovereign. In such
circumstances who would venture to draw the horoscope of the Europe of
to-morrow?
For consider the situation. Recognized constitutional government
has actually thought itself fortunate in treating with "strikers,"
and in attempting to conceal the reality of its defeat behind the
vain show of an arrangement, the actual significance of which
deceives nobody. The face of Europe has changed in an instant. The Old
World is conquered. Socialism bestirs itself, and begins its
conquering march. The dangerous problems, hitherto so vague, become
instantly pressing. Yet no one is ready with a solution, and few care
even to discuss these problems. Even the leaders of the hostile
army, the strike generals, do not, can not, measure all the
consequences of their orders. Drunk with their new power they
forget for the moment its unseen bearings. When first, more used to
the sensation of omnipotence, they look about them to see what
their action may have precipitated, they will draw back in horror.
The phrase, "the present situation of Europe," therefore, can have
reference now only to a very indefinite and a future thing. The
present is big with uncertainties for the morrow, and the prospect
would be really distressing, if the established wielders of power did
not realize--what now is inevitable--the imperative necessity of
coming to some understanding with this fresh force; the hopelessness,
henceforward, of playing with theories of repression, and the duty of
negotiating with this great amorphous army, which, once it is on the
march, may drink dry the cisterns at which human society is accustomed
to assuage its thirst. And it is in the light of these events in
Belgium, that I do not hesitate to say, that Europe for a long time
still will not be menaced by war. The social problem is now too
pressing. It requires the entire attention. Woe to the blind! The hour
of rest is past; a new world awakes. It knows its strength. It has
everything to gain, nothing to lose. Follow it with anxious eye, ye
who sleep now in possession, for if ye sleep too long, ye will awake
in chains!
But apart from this event, which is the prelude of a social struggle
to be of long duration, yet absolutely inevitable, it is possible at
this moment, when the European world is preparing to turn westward
beyond the Atlantic, there to entrust to the proud loyalty of the
United States immense and untold treasures, to predict for this
continent a prolonged peace--a peace, however, which is as the
uncertain tranquillity of an old man heavily dozing on a bed where
there is no real rest. It is alone one of those incidents, impossible
to anticipate, which seize whole nations as with madness, driving them
to arms and carnage, and leaving them at the end of the disillusion of
the struggle stupefied with their victory, or terrified in their
defeat, that can break the uncertain spell of this restless sleep. But
incidents such as these, which bring to naught all human calculation,
can, indeed must, be left out of account, when considering the
character of a given moment, and the prospects of peace or war.
Europe, just now, is divided up rather arbitrarily, but none the less
really. This is partly due to a premeditated combination, partly to
chance, partly also to the bungling or ignorance of rulers. The Triple
Alliance, due to the decisive action of Prince Bismarck, is the only
truly scientific conception of the sort, the only one possessing a
stable and seriously laid foundation. It includes Austria, which
relies on Germany to shield it from Russia, as its directly menacing
foe, or to bar against Russia the route to Constantinople whenever
Russia shall appear fatally dangerous to the existence of the combined
empire of Austria-Hungary. It includes Germany, which, as careful
organizer of the Alliance, is thus protected against any possible
simultaneous action of France and Russia. It includes Italy, which,
otherwise weak in the presence of the disdainful hostility of France,
is thus assured a certain security and repose. Aside from this great
Triple Alliance, the European states have no real collective
organization; there are only affinities badly defined, private
interests, or uncertain situations from which they do not venture to
think of extricating themselves. What is called the Franco-Russian
understanding is limited at the moment to an exchange of notes which
might serve as the basis of a military convention; to demonstrations
at once noisy and platonic, in which France is playing a sort of
Potiphar role; and to the chance eventuality of Russia's one day
finding herself engaged in some formidable struggle when she could
count on the irresistible and unthinking enthusiasm of France, who
would place blood and treasure at her disposal.
When has human history ever afforded such a spectacle?
No real alliance exists between Russia and France, but no French
government could resist popular pressure, were the question to come up
of helping Russia in the case of a war direct or indirect against
Germany. Yet at a single gesture of the autocratic czar, Russia would
shoulder arms and fight in whatever deadly combat France found itself
involved. The Emperor of Russia is to-day, perhaps, the most
formidable monarch who has ever existed. He has at his unchecked beck
and call the vastest empire in Europe, but an empire without gold,
sunlight, or liberty. Stop! It is a force, blind and brutal, and
capable of a frightful impact; a force which the finger of a single
man can set in motion, and which may be made to fall crushingly at the
exact point designated by the imperious and imperial gesture. To this
force which does not reason, the czar can, with a gleam of his sword,
rally the power of France. France, the country of sunlight and
liberty, where gold flows in rivulets, where every citizen thinks and
wills, and where every soldier would fight to the death, conscious
that it is only with Russia, in common struggle against common
enemies, that a great conflict may be undertaken. The spectacle of
such power, dormant in one human brain, is almost overwhelming; and
the psychologist who portends that every man disposing of autocratic
power, whether czar, sultan or pope, must inevitably go mad, utters a
thought perhaps not so paradoxical after all.
However, this autocrat so formidably armed is well known to be
absolutely pacific. He turns a constantly listening ear to the
counsels of an experienced queen, herself full of the spirit of peace,
the Queen of Denmark. This queen loves Germany; she adores the young
emperor whom she calls "an angel." She has already smoothed down many
rough places. It was she who brought about the Kiel interview and the
visit of the czarevitch to Berlin. She has strengthened the idea of
peace in the brain of this emperor, whence, instead, war might spring
full-armed; war _fin de siecle_; the new, mysterious, unprecedented
form of it; the war of infinitely multiplied murder, covering the Old
World with corpses of the slain. The special factor of armed explosion
most to be dreaded in Europe is thus held in check by an all-powerful
hand gently directed. It is nothing less than the work of God that has
made him who holds the chief of the arsenals of power, pacific, and
thus reassuring to the world.
Turn your vision from this tacit though vague understanding between
France and Russia, and look beyond the regularly organized Triple
Alliance; the eye falls on three great isolated powers, directed by
various motives, and the action of which, determined upon only at the
last moment, is constantly in the thought of the other ruling nations.
Of these three the first is England. No minister of foreign affairs in
any country would ever think of committing towards the English nation
the crime of supposing its policy subservient to that of any other
nation. The dream or the fear of a quadruple alliance has haunted only
the crudest brains. England remains free in its movements, and it will
preserve this liberty to the last. This is, moreover, for the
happiness of all; for, except in those accesses of madness, a sort of
factor of which, as I said, no account can be taken, no power will
think of taking up a struggle in which the intervention of England, on
one side or the other, can determine the issue.
The second great power which remains free of all entanglement is that
which dominates the Bosphorus. A strange power, indeed! It has no
friends. There it remains alone on this European soil, of which it
occupies certain extreme points, like a bit of abandoned booty
tempting the cupidity of the Christian world. The whole of Europe
looks thither with dull hate, and each power would willingly bear away
a bit of the trappings and the hangings that render soft and
resplendent the gilded cage where lies the sick lion of Yildiz Kiosk.
If ever the war which appears to me so distant breaks out, Abdul
Hamid, or his successor, will have his hands free; and at the supreme
moment when the conqueror, whomsoever he may be, cannot reject them,
will impose his conditions. If the then sultan neglects to seize the
event, it is not at all sure that the crescent will cease to mark its
silhouette on the firmament of Europe; but at all events, until then
European peace is the surest safeguard of the Ottoman Empire, and this
Abdul Hamid well knows.
The third of the great isolated powers of which I speak is personified
to-day by the grand old man whom an heroic pertinacity, henceforward
to be traditional, keeps a prisoner at the Vatican. No one can have
any idea of the life and movement which reigns in this voluntary
prison which lies over against the Quirinal. Thither flow innumerable
missives from every corner of the world, and could I only tell some of
them, it would be seen how long still is the arm extending from the
shadow of St. Peter's; how dreadful still are the lips that speak in
the shade of the Vatican. I should show the Holy Father and his
cardinals writing to the Emperor of Austria, directing him by counsel
and advice, and sometimes almost by their orders. I should show Prince
Bismarck continuing, since his fall, to hold before the eyes of the
pope, glimpses of the more or less partial restoration of the temporal
power. I should show Leo XIII. now trying to unite, now to alienate,
France and Russia, according as at the moment this or that policy
seems to him most propitious for his own cause or the cause of peace;
and I should show, at the same time, the Vatican divided within
itself, and Cardinal Vauncelli working, in secret letters addressed to
powerful sovereigns, against the policy of Cardinal Rampolla, and
acting on the mind of Leo XIII. to detach him from his secretary of
state, and wean him from the democratic policy on which he is now
launched. I should show, also, all the leading politicians of France,
whether in power or out, soliciting the support, the protection, the
favor of Leo XIII., and the latter working with astounding insight for
the fusion, more and more complete, of the liberal monarchical party
with the Republic. I should show again how, owing to mysterious
action, instability has become the normal state of France; and how the
action of Russia, driven by the double current from the north and the
south, not only has been not a source of strength for M. Ribot, but
even forced him to his fall. Not only did the czar refuse to send the
Russian fleet to France, and to let the czarevitch pass through Paris
under pretext of going from Berlin to London, but he has just of late
imposed on the French prime minister exigencies of such a nature that
the latter has preferred to lay down the power rather than to submit.
When M. Ribot, minister of foreign affairs, committed the political
stupidity of carrying to the tribune the name of Baron Mohrenheim in
connection with the Panama scandal, the Emperor of Russia showed that
he was much irritated and wounded. M. Develle, minister of foreign
affairs, hurried to the baron with excuses. But the czar declared
these excuses unsatisfactory. M. Ribot then went himself to see the
ambassador and give him certain explanations and excuses. Still the
czar was not satisfied. He demanded a letter written by the prime
minister and addressed to the Russian minister of foreign affairs, M.
de Giers, who was then stopping at the gates of France. M. Ribot could
not accept this demand. He had already endured the insult of M.
Stambouloff during the affair of the Chadourne expulsion. He did not
wish to leave behind him a letter of excuse addressed to M. de Giers.
He preferred to fall, and he fell.
This is a fair instance of the hidden forces which sweep through the
side-scenes of international European politics. In the preceding rapid
summary of the present state of politics in the Old World, the
conclusion must come irrefutably, and that is the ground of these
remarks, that no war is in sight, nor will be for yet a long time. The
Triple Alliance wishes, and necessarily wishes, peace. The young
German emperor, from whom people have affected to anticipate some mad
and irresponsible conduct, has no doubt uttered some imprudent words,
but he has never committed any dangerous action. Really, his mouth
seems a sort of safety-valve for the boiling steam within. So far he
is satisfied with the conquests already secured. He is trying to bring
back to him the Emperor of Russia. The meeting which he is now having
with the pope is intended to bring about a formal _rapprochement_
between the Quirinal and Vatican. Leo XIII., in turning his face
towards the democracy, disquiets all thrones; but he disquiets
especially the throne of Italy, since he is showing the Italians that
the Papacy is not only not an enemy of republics, but that it might be
the protector of future republics in Italy, if the Italian fatherland,
dreaming of the former brilliant prosperity, tried to found a
democratic federation, with the pope as the centre and beneficent
father. But at the same time Leo XIII. will whisper peace in the ear
of William II. The young emperor wishes for a long era of peace. The
new military law, with its far-reaching bearings, proves this. Even
to-day he would never think of undertaking a war which left Prince
Bismarck out of account, and he will never undertake a war which might
cause his return.
So, too, the Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary; he too is inclined
to peace. He cannot risk a war. The bonds which link the different
portions of the empire are too fragile to be exposed to the rude
strain of armed strife. Italy, perhaps, by a fortunate war might be a
gainer; but it is not strong enough to provoke one, or even to carry
one on. It would regard the Papacy at the Vatican as too great a
danger at its back; and, with little hope of conquering anything
without its borders, it might legitimately fear to find Rome no
longer intact on its return.
As for the Emperor of Russia, he is moderate at once in his love for
France and his hatred of Germany. So far, a man of genius has been
wanting to cement the bonds of alliance between France and Germany.
There is already an understanding, vague, platonic, and with no morrow
assured to it. The French Republic will recoil before the thought of
war, so long as Russian action does not precipitate an explosion. The
Republic knows that war would be at its peril; that vanquished it is
submerged under floods of anarchy, that victorious it brings forth a
Caesar, and it wishes peace.
England, rich, industrial, devoted to its own internal problems,
preserves an attitude which is an earnest of peace. So that, when one
casts a steady glance over the Europe of the present hour, one is
minded to say to the world about to repair to the great centre of
industry, of letters, and of art, which Chicago is so soon to be: "Go
in peace. War is distant. Gather in peace the fruit of your peaceful
victories."