The Express. — 1868-09-19 (London, England)

PUBLIIHID  EVERY EVENING.  LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPT. 19.  WAR NOTES.  EVIIR4ON3 is talking of war. The air is charged with rumours, the newspapers teem with predictions, the Sovereigns and the peoples have an uneasy consciousness that a gigantic outbreak maybe at hand. Nobody can state with precision the exact grounds of his belief, yet everyone speaks of war as imminent ; and some go so far as to say that it would be better than a long continuance of a costly armed peace. To speak of the greatest, the most profound, and the most desolate of earthly calamities as more to be desired than an armed peace, is to say that it is better to be dashed to pieces at the bottom of a precipice than to stand in dangerous proximity to its brink, that taunter is preferable to quarrelling, and bi (dal violence to empty threats. It is talking and writing of this kind which smoothes the way to war, and the habit of treating it UN inevitable is the most certain way of bringing it al pout . The horrors of war are a trite story, yet the present tone of the foreign, and of some our Lome, journals load to the belief that those Lori ors are in danger of being overlooked, and that vacuity and ignorance may work more terrible evil, in Europe than either kingly jealousy or inkiwrial :oubitiou. The unwilling readiness to tight avowed by Prussia ; the dread of letting fall woills which nal), be misinterpreted as bellicose, acknowledged by France ; Austlia's hotrod and jealousy of Russia and Prussia ; and Russia's watchfulness towards Turkey,  are so many elements, which uneasy speedstions and preparations are quietly fanning into a flame. There is something morbidly fascinating to the human mind in dwelling upon tho dreaded and the horrible until it appears natural and easy ; but the writers and thinkers who indulge in it bare a heavy responsibility at their doors. " There is full " many a man that crioth ' Wale, werre,' " wrote CHAUCFII at a time when the triumphs of the BLaex Ilumit were at least as glorious as any likely to accrue now, " that wot ful litel to what " werre amounteth," and the truth is as manifest in our time as his. It is quite true that the present aspect of affairs is alarming; that there is too much truth in many of the allegations made ; and that the Powers of Europe seem to be sitting upon powder barrels with a lighted meta in either hand. It may be even true that war must come, and that with the most peaceful intentions and the most discreet foreign minister in the world, England may again drift into it. But let us at least—each in his sphere—do our utmost to avert the scourge. DAVID chose pestilence rather than war, preferring, as Lirruaa said finely, to fall into the hands of Gkin than those of pitiless man ; and lees misery would follow upon a decimating plague than upon that war which so many talk of glibly as inevitable, Tho " improvements" in the art of slaying ; the terrible ingenuity which makes missile and weapon more and more formidable as the years go by ; the loss and misery which have followed in the wake of the brief struggle between Austria and Prussia ; the absolute oortainty that if the torch be once kindled it will not be speedily quenched, should make us more than ever humbly prayerful against war in our time. Better a thousandfold is peace even when armed to tho teeth, than devastating, murderous, devouring war; and to those who remember the premonitory symptoms of every great outbreak, there is something inexpressibly shocking and sad in the threatening rumours and gossip with which Europe is surcharged, and which are multiplied and circulated through thoughtlesumes,