The phrase, “the present situation of Europe,” therefore, can have reference 65 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. 66 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 siècle; 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.