IN conversation with a fellow-traveler upon the cars, the other day, Gen. Garfield is reported to have said:— “The future of our country is a great problem, and, for that matter, so is the future of Europe, and of the whole world. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a very intelligent gentleman in New York City a few days ago. He had just returned from Europe, where he had been traveling for two years, and he was in a despondent state of mind over the impressions he had received while abroad. He detailed these impressions at length to me, and in a way that was well calculated to make a systematic impression. It was the prevailing impression among very many of the thinking men of Europe that society there was being undermined by certain irresistible influences. In the first place, it is honey-combed by wide-spread and still wider spreading infidelity. The Christian religion is no longer a supreme influence over the minds and consciences of the masses. The leaders of thought, the scholars of England, France, and Germany, have popularized unbelief, and in France it has passed into a current remark that only women and children are any longer seen at church. “In the second place, there is great restlessness among the masses in regard to the inequalities of society. Why should the few be so very rich, and the many so very poor? is the burden of their inquiry, and also of conversation one with another. This under-tone of discontent is visibly growing, and is finding expression through channels that are unsettling the foundation stones of the whole social fabric in Europe. Socialism in Germany, Nihilism in Russia, Communism in France, and Chartism in England, were all at work, and the masses were being leavened with these principles. Their aversion to kingcraft and priestcraft borders upon revolution. The whole of Europe is volcanic at this time. Immense standing armies are all that repress the outburst. But while they repress it they afford the grievance on which revolution grows and spreads, and becomes more and more irresistible for the final reckoning. It is believed by many of the most sagacious minds that the day of upheaval is not far off. “But this is not all,” said Gen. Garfield, “that my New York traveler said to me. It is believed in Europe that one of these great historic movements of the Mongolian race, that in the remote past have dispersed their peoples into less densely populated countries than their own, is now preparing. For instance, the Russians, in pressing recently upon the Asiatic borders of their empire, developed by actual reconnaissance a Chinese army, of which they were totally ignorant, two hundred and fifty thousand strong, and armed, too, with all the effective enginery of modern war, including the Krupp guns. These guns had been made by their own skilled workmen, who had been sent to Europe and secretly taught the art, and Prussian officers had drilled their armies in the use of them. “No man knows to-day the strength of the Chinese military establishment. All we see or know of what is going on in China is on the shore edges. It is believed that the skeleton for an army of twenty millions already exists. It is believed, further, that the idea of conquest has once again taken hold of the Chinese mind, and that the great Buddhistic family of Asiatic races can be leagued for not only a wholesale raid upon Europe, but also for a descent upon the Pacific coast of the United States. Such a movement means the possible wiping out of Caucasian civilization. England has mobilized these Asiatics as a defense against Russia's ambition in the East, but, as Count Schouvaloff said in the Berlin conference, what if the Asiatics, taught the art of war, should, like the irresistible Turks, once again look down upon the plains of Europe, bearing upon their banners the legend, ‘We come, we see, we conquer’? “Modern war is now a matter of effective arms, and of a simple and reliable commissariat system. The Mongolian race is capable of great personal prowess. Being fatalists, they dare everything for the end they have in view. Their food is simple, easily supplied, and easily transported. Their endurance of fatigue is proverbial. Once organized and in motion, they could swarm into Russia as irresistibly as the locusts of Egypt, and upon the Pacific coast of this continent as numerous and destructive as the grasshoppers. Once started, where would they stop? Civilization would retire before them as from a plague.”