The Pope! If he had only read, pondered, and learned by heart Victor Hugo's poem, "Le Pape," he might perhaps be still at home in the Vatican. But the "infallible" can never learn. At Constantinople he is at least safe. The Greek government there is secure against all present foes. Then, the triarchate; is it not surprising? Pope, Patriarch, and Primate of Canterbury! Roman, Greek, and Anglican, united at last! A dream of the last century ecclesiastics is fulfilled,—alas, too late; for the glory has departed from the tiara, the crozier, and the mitre altogether.
The Sultan, it is said, has found an asylum in Persia. The Shah allows him a palace, but he is shorn already of half his hareem. Perhaps the fate of Lear may be before him yet, though not from filial ingratitude.
February 4th, 1931.
Important cable news this morning is, that the German republican government last evening passed the bill accepting the proposal of France to purchase Alsace and Lorraine for 300,000,000 francs. More interesting still, a bill was also introduced, and is likely to pass, ceding to the French all the rest of the territory on the west side of the Rhine bordering on France. The long-coveted natural boundary will thus be theirs. How infinitely better this than war upon war for revenge and conquest!
The tunnel under the British Channel is nearly finished. It is to be constantly illuminated with electric light, and, being a joint national work, will be a free public (not highway exactly, but) way, for all.
Austria-Hungary appears to be, for a time at least, tranquil. The emperor has conceded all that the constitutionalists required of him. There are now only four emperors in the world:—those of Austria, Brazil, India, and China; and the first two are so limited in power as hardly to deserve the imperial name. The title of tsar has been definitely denied to the present constitutional monarch of Russia; he is really something between a king and a president.
Fearful indeed must have been the communist or nihilist war of Russia of thirty years ago. The country has hardly recovered from it yet. Had it not been for the loyalty of the large population of those families emancipated in 1861 by the Tsar Alexander II. from serfdom, not only the imperial family, but all the members of the nobility, and the whole class of wealthy Russians would probably have been put to death by fire and sword.
Welcome to all lovers of peace and prosperity will be the late intelligence that, at the Congress of Berlin, all the great powers have agreed to reduce their standing armies to 50,000 men for each nation; and that neither power shall increase its forces, without two months' notice to all the rest. The "volunteer" military organizations will still be allowed, besides these armies; but zeal for rifle practice seems to be very much on the wane. It is probable that occasional showy parades may soon be all that is left in civilized countries of the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war."