Political Turmoil in Europe

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 31, 1907

Political Turmoil in Europe

Germany, England, and France have each come up to the opening of the new year with the minds of their people fully absorbed in questions of the greatest moment. Perhaps never in their history have all three nations been plunged simultaneously into such a tremendous whirlpool of internal disagreement as those in which they are all struggling at the present time. The German Reichstag has been dissolved for performing what the German people consider the legitimate functions of that body. The members of the dissolved body are protesting against what they consider the absolutism of the ruler in seeking to force legislation favorable to his ideas, and there is no little feeling of dissatisfaction throughout the realm on that account. The English Education bill which has raised such a storm throughout the nation is now declared to be dead, but the manner of its taking off has opened the way for a broader struggle over the questions of actual disestablishment of the church and the dissolution of the House of Lords. France continues to maintain a dignified attitude toward the great question that has threatened internal disorder in that country. Officials of the Catholic Church throughout the world have sought to make it appear that the present French government is bent on a course of persecution of the church and open warfare against religion; but it is difficult for an unprejudiced observer to see how the separation of church and state could have been accomplished in a more lenient manner. The government amended the new law of associations that even the appearance of rigor might be obliterated; but Rome would have none of it. She would accept nothing that she herself did not dictate. From the first, the Roman officials have seemed to manifest a purpose to force the French government to take extreme measures, in the hope that the very severity of the actions taken might result in a strong reaction against the government. The government has refused thus to weaken its cause, and the threatened civil war has not materialized. There are interesting times before the nations as well as before this people.