The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-03-20
WHAT IS ENcLAsD,s EXCUSE.


two months and half % it have been,
tnen indeed the year 1896 will be a
noted one in the history of Europe.
and doubtless our annals will hand it
down to the futdre historian of the
decline and fall of modern Europe as
the period of precarious tenure of
peace. The year began with the Ar
menian Question in the horizon of Eu-
rope "a a probable rude disturber of
the general peace. This was augment
ca by the Venezuelan dis
pOee with England, brought on by
Inc vigorous assertion of the Monroe
doctrine by our government, and the
apparent inclination on the part of
european nations to sympathize with
England. This was followed shortly
afterwards by the invasion Of the South
Africa republic by Jameson, and the
congratulations of the German en-
peror on the vigor and promptness
with which the Boer president of that
country resisted the invasion and i'm
prisoned the principal leaders of it,
notwithstanding that they were sub
Jects of Great Britain, and their ar
rests involved the courageous little re-
public in controversy with the power
fui nation of England.
Scarcely is this furry put in the way
OF subsistence by the explanations of
emperor William than the action of
our national congress in passing ex-
presslons Of sympathy with the Cuban
insurgents arouses the war spirit of
Spain, with which some European ma
tons sympathize. We had just begun
to look with some complacency upon
the ebullitions of Spanish war-wratE,
and the speculations of possible Eu-
ropean combinations against us, when
from far-distant Abyssinia there came
the startling news of the overwhelming
defeat of Htaly's army by tbs subjects
of King Menelek; followed by the sub
sequent likelihood of Italy's hunlilia-
ton, resulting in the disruption of the
great triple-slliance between Germany,
Austria and Italy, upon which very
largely the peace of Europe is supposed
to have rested.
The next thing to disturb the tran
guilty Of Europe and set on foot new
speculations about fresh combinations,
new alliances, and probable new align
ment of powers in the event of war,
is the recent announcement that Eng
land has ordered an advance of her
army of occupation in Egypt up the
Nile as far as Dongola. which is within
the territory Of King Menelek.
Speculation is rife. of course, as to
what motive prompts England to this
invasion-for that it is an invasion ad-
ntits Of no doubt; and 1t would be alb
solutely without justification in the
eyes of Europe if Abyssinia were
civilized instead of a barbarous coun-
try. Some see in the sudden move an
effort on the part of England to put a
period to her isolation from European
combinations, a thing that has given
her statesmen no little concern of late.
Those who incline to this opinion think
the movement means British assistance
TO Italy, in return for which the triple
NIT Great Britain within its terms.
which would align the four great pow
ers, England, Germany, Austria and
Italy, as against France and Russia.
with the smaller states variously al
lotted TO the respective divisions of the
great powers.
Another superstition is that England
a &c or to
she feels over the fall of Khartoum in
1855, and the cowardly desertion of
Chinese Gordon at the same time: and
though more than ten years have
elapsed since England's humiliation.
she sees in the arrogance that the vic
tory over the Italians is likely to en-
gender in the followers of the Mahdi.
sufficient excuse to justify an invasion
OF their country. incidentally it is
held by those who advance that as a
reason for England's invasion of
Menelek's territory, that she fears that
IL the Mohammedan success is not
checked in Africa the great probability
is that England will have an uprising
of Mohammedans in India, and a great
religious war on her hands in the
Mohammedan sections of her empire.
Still others who try to assign mo-
tive for England's action, see nothing
in it but just the chronic greed of
England for more empire and a deter
mination perhaps to connect her ever
growing colonies in the south and east
of Africa with upper Egypt. which,
with her right of way through Egypt
by reason of her semi-protectorate over
the latter country, would give her &C
cess through the valley of the Nile to
her South African colonies.
But let England's motive be what
it may, either one of these we have
or all of them combined.
she will have great difficulty in finding
either in one of them, or all of them
combined, a justification for that in
vasion. 1t is simply cold blooded, bru-
tai determination on the part of Eng
land to do an act which, in the eyes
of her statesmen, in some way or other
will secure some advantage to Eng
land, but which has no foundation
whatever in righteousness, but must
depend upon the might of the British
empire for its justification. It is a
clear case of a nation feeling power
and forgetting right.
A special dispatch to The Herald
yesterday from Washington brings the
glad word that the subcommittee of
the house committee on public build