Where is the wisdom of highly-placed men like the German Emperor and his new Chancellor assuring the world, in addresses from the throne and after-dinner speeches, that the peace of Europe was never more assured than at present, and that the political horizon is without a cloud even of the size of Elijah’s ominous and initial speck of vapour? What is the truth or the wisdom of such assurances, when the thorn of Alsace-Lorraine is still sticking in the flesh of the unforgiving and revengeful French; when Italy still has some territory ‘unredeemed;’ when Denmark still harbours a deep grudge against her truculent despoiler; when even the peaceful Swedes, who are still animated by the spirit of the Great Gustavus, long to free their former subjects, the Finns, from the tyrannical mastery of the Russians; when the Spaniards would gladly profit by a European complication—even if they shrank from the thought of an audacious _coup de main_—to repossess themselves of Gibraltar; when the Portuguese, following suit, would never hesitate to kick their British rival in Africa, if they deemed him to be down; when the Cretans, egged on by the Greeks, are firmly resolved to throw off the galling yoke of the Turks; when ex-ministers like M. Tricoupis stump about the Balkan Peninsula, openly preaching Pan-hellenism and Balkan Federation against the advocates of disunited nationalities; when the Servians secretly vow to settle up old scores with their Bulgarian vanquishers, and when these Bulgarian victors themselves, with their Prime Minister more than their Prince at their head, are sternly determined to be free and independent alike of Sultan and of Czar; when Austria continues to cast longing eyes in the direction of Salonika; and when, above all things, the Colossus of the North, with his head pillowed on snow, and his feet swathed in flowers of the sunny South, has sworn by the soul of his assassinated and sainted father that he will ever remain true to the intention of his sire in exacting a solid equivalent of power, prestige, and territorial foothold on the Balkan Peninsula for all the blood and treasure spent by Russia in the task of ‘liberating’ the Bulgarians; when all these things, all these slumbering passions and meditated schemes of aggression and revenge are duly considered, how is it possible for any one, be he sovereign or subject, to lull the world asleep by false assurances of peace which is sooner or later doomed to be broken?