THE RUMOURED RUSSO-GERMAN QUARREL.
IT is very easy to exaggerate the uneasiness which just now prevails upon the Continent, more especially as it is of the vaguest and most fluctuating kind ; but that an uneasiness prevails, it is difficult to deny. An impression has been spread abroad—one scarcely knows how—of a quarrel having begun between Germany and Russia which may lead to actual war. The two Emperors, it is said, are still friendly, but their reigns may be short ; the two Heirs-Apparent are by no means so united, and the two Chancellors are almost publicly quarrelling with one another. The newspapers of the two countries, some of them semi-inspired, are engaged in a savage "polemic," and phrases are used about Slavic feeling, German strength, French alliances and dangers from France, which are either meaning- less, or are calculations of resources for actual war. To add to the appearance of seriousness in the commotion, Prince Bismarck is evidently bent on drawing closer the alliance with Austria, while the Cesarewitch flits about in the North, intent., as jour- nalists will have it, on new agreements about " eventualities " with the Scandinavian Courts. We cannot say we think the danger great, though Russia is evidently irritated and Ger- many sullen ; but where there is smoke there is fire, and the tumult is quite serious enough to justify a statement ef the causes which excite and prevent hostility between Russia and Berlin.
There can be little doubt of the existence of a deep-seated dislike between the two peoples. The Russians fret under the pressure of German competition, under German influence in Russia, which is marked, the German subjects of the Czar rising in all departments of life faster than the Slays; under the superiority of German civilisation, and under the obstacles placed by Germany in the way of Russian expansion. They believe that Germany, which in 1870 benefited so greatly by the Russian alliance, repaid Russia last year by thwarting her plans for obtaining the filet position in the East. They also accuse her of deliberately urging Austria and her South Slavons eastward, as a counterpoise to Russia, and to defeat her modern pretensions to the "natural leadership of the whole Slavonic race." The Germans, on the other hand, though not jealous of Russia, regard her with a secret fear, born in part of the events of 1848, and yet with a certain con- tempt. They think of all Slays, Poles and Russians included, as too many Englishmen think of the Irish, yet look with dread at the vast masses of the Russians, all guided by a single will, at the nearness of Russia to their capital, at their own undefended and almost indefensible frontiers, and at the vast plain between Berlin and Moscow, over which they think, in their hour of difficulty, half a million of stubborn soldiers might march to enslave them. It is the fear of Russia at least as much as the fear of France which makes Germany tolerate her military system. The present dictator of the Germans undoubtedly shares these sentiments. Prince Bismarck has repeatedly expressed his opinion that there was nothing in the Russians, yet his be noire is the dread lest his work should be undone by Russia and France joining hands. If he could throw back Russia from the frontier, he would hold Germany to be far safer, and his own great work of unification far more likely to be permanent. And he may hold that this work is not wholly beyond his power to accomplish. It would not be impossible, if Russia were defeated, and thrown, as she would be by a great defeat, into temporary anarchy, to detach the German provinces on the Baltic, and re-establish Poland, with its old boundary reaching at least to Kief. With a Hohen- zollern as King, strong military institutions, and its old pat- riotism revived by hope, the kingdom of Poland, while unable to attack Germany, would be a permanent defence for her frontier to the eastward,—as sound a defence, at all events, as Belgium has proved upon the French side, and considered as a 'boundary, far more difficult to cross. A State in the posi- tion a Germany, with a population penetrated by such feelings and a ruler capable of such thoughts, is always in a mental attitude in which any idea of hostility on its neighbours' part is a serious thing, and one tending to produce very extreme results. On the other hand, the Russians, aware of all this, as is shown by the ready belief accorded to gossip about menacing plans found in secret papers—gossip which the Crown Prince himself had to deny—and by the occasional speeches falsely or truly attributed to the Cesare- witch, whose accession would certainly be followed, as a rumour of it was this week, by a fall in all German securities, are as suspicious as the Germans, and equally inclined to count up their resources and assume an attitude of defiance. There is ground enough, in this temper of mind in the two nations, exasperated as it is by the Russian feeling that Austria is a deadly enemy in the South, and the German feeling that Austria is doing German work, and doing it well, to produce watchfulness and uneasiness ; but when it comes to calculations as to the possibility of war, there is a mass of reasoning to be considered on the other side. It is scarcely possible to believe that Russia would resolve upon such a war. Nothing but a burst of popular rage against Austria which the Court could not control, or a belief that nothing but a great war could prevent the overthrow of the autocracy, could induce the group who govern Russia to encounter voluntarily such a frightful risk ; and we see no sign either that the true people are exasperated, thongh the Panslavic Clubs are, or that the autocracy is in any danger, except from the overwrought nerves and consequent liability to excitement of its present head. He, no doubt, is exasperated as well as alarmed at the situation of affairs, and might take a desperate step, but he,has alternatives other. than a war with the mail-clad Bello- moth on his west. He might defy England, or carry out strongly and decisively the agrarian wishes of the peasantry, on whom, and net on " society," his throne rests. Then the two Coprts are for the present strongly allied, and the three Imperial Courts have a secret bond, the subjugation of Poland, which has repeatedly within the last century and a half stood a very acute strain. On the other hand, the German Army chiefs, who must be consulted if war is thought of, know well that a war of invasion against Rutisia would be a terrible affair. It would not be a duel, to begin with, and every ally is a possible deserter in the hour of need. The Russian Army, they may calculate, is not competent to cope on equal terms with the German Army, which, if it had been posted in Bulgaria, would have destroyed the invading force ; but it is competent to inflict shattering losses in a series of battles like Zorndorf,—Frederick's most ruinous
victory. There would be no limit to the supplies of men,—men of stubborn courage, fighting on their own ground, and actuated by a patriotism which, as the last Polish insurrection showed, whenever the danger is close enongh to be seen by an ignorant population, burns up in a strong flame. The loss to Germany, even if successful, would be of a kind which, unless Germany were directly menaced, would shake the throne, for the Germans, though always organised for war next week, feel the losses of war with a passionate regret and anger which we do not find either in French or Russians. They are not so consoled by victory as the French, and they have not the indifference to the individual which is the very base of the Russian system, both political and social. The whole land would, after such a war, be covered with a mourning which would not cease for a generation. Apart from the possibility of defeat, apart from the strong chance that Russia would make no peace, but go on fighting from year to year, sullenly advancing while there were men to charge—the first Alexander's resolve, when Napoleon seemed likely to win—any war with Russia would involve to Germany an effort and a loss such as a cool man only makes and risks when it is better to die than not to succeed. It would be like a struggle in which, though victory might be obtained, a limb must be lost for ever. And then, when all was done, there would still be Russia in arms upon the east, though further off, and France in arms upon the west. We find it very difficult, therefore, to believe that either Germany or Russia unless convinced of immediate danger from the other, would , won suffer-will evelope into active hos- 11 '11 t o d tility, and regard all the muttering now heard as evidence more of temper than of design, and as exaggerated by the secret wish in France that Germany shonld suffer, and the patent belief in England that Russia is our one Asiatic foe. Why that belief should create a wish that Russia should be tlAown back, when the first result of that operation would he to compel her to put her whole strength into her Asiatic work, we can only understand on the theory that hatred has overpowered fore- sight.
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