cost with a cheerfulness admirable when you consider the sorrows which it
occasions, aggravated by the distress produced by the dearness of bread.
If, instead of the Crimea, the seat of war had been the Rhine, with a
definite purpose, the whole nation would have risen, as it has done
before.

But the object of the war is unintelligible to the people. They only know
that France is at war, and must be made, at any price, to triumph.

I must confess, that I myself, who understand the object for which all
this blood is shed, and who approve that object, do not feel the interest
which such great events ought to excite; for I do not expect a result
equal to the sacrifice.

I think, with you, that Russia is a great danger to Europe. I think so
more strongly, because I have had peculiar opportunities of studying the
real sources of her power, and because I believe these sources to be
permanent, and entirely beyond the reach of foreign attack. (I have not
time now to tell you why.) But I am deeply convinced that it is not by
taking from her a town, or even a province, nor by diplomatic
precautions, still less by placing sentinels along her frontier, that the
Western Powers will permanently stop her progress.

A temporary bulwark may be raised against her, but a mere accident may
destroy it, or a change of alliances or a domestic policy may render it
useless.

I am convinced that Russia can be stopped only by raising before her
powers created by the hatred which she inspires, whose vital and constant
interest it shall be to keep themselves united and to keep her in. In
other words, by the resurrection of Poland, and by the re-animation of
Turkey.

I do not believe that either of these means can now be adopted. The
detestable jealousies and ambitions of the European nations resemble, as
you say in your letter, nothing better than the quarrels of the Greeks in
the face of Philip. Not one will sacrifice her passions or her objects.

About a month ago I read some remarkable articles, which you perhaps have
seen, in the German papers, on the progress which Russia is making in the
extreme East. The writer seems to be a man of sense and well informed.

It appears that during the last five years, Russia, profiting by the
Chinese disturbances, has seized, not only the mouth of the Amoor, but a
large territory in Mongolia, and has also gained a considerable portion
of the tribes which inhabit it. You know that these tribes once ove