With regard to the other question, Mr Kinglake appears to think that, after the Russians had evacuated the Principalities (as they did immediately on re-crossing the Danube), there was no further ground for continuing the war, and that a naval blockade would have forced her to conclude peace. But to have forced her to make peace, returning to the _statu quo_, would by no means have answered our ends, for it would have left her to repeat the aggression on a more favourable opportunity, with the advantage of better understanding the conditions of success. That she would have consented at that time to give any pledge for the security of Turkey, is incredible, if we consider the course taken by her diplomatists at the conferences in the following year, when she had suffered so severely. But to capture Sebastopol and its fleet, would give us the security we wanted, and the pressure of the blockade might then be depended on for ending the war. The question then, in our judgment, resolves itself into this: Was there a reasonable hope of at once succeeding in the object of the invasion; and was common foresight exercised in providing for the possibility of failure? Events have answered the last question. Due provision was not made for the possibility of a first failure. The country was aghast at the position in which the army found itself; and we think that, in making the statement we are about to quote, Mr Kinglake is recording a state of opinion, which, though perfectly just, and always maintained to be just in these pages, both during and after the war, had no existence at the time he speaks of. “Those who thought more warily than the multitude foresaw that the enterprise might take time; but they also perceived that even this result would not be one of unmixed evil; for if Russia should commit herself to a lengthened conflict in the neighbourhood of Sebastopol, she would be put to a great trial, and would see her wealth and strength ruinously consumed by the mere stress of the distance between the military centre of the empire and the south-westernmost angle of the Crimea.” All this is true; so true that Russia would have done well to leave Sebastopol to its fate, rather than make those efforts to maintain it which were so ruinous. Moreover the Crimea is, from its geographical circumstances, always the most favourable point of Russian territory for the operations of an enemy who commands the sea. Its form of an extended peninsula renders it vulnerable at many points; it does not afford the means of supplying the force necessary for its defence; and the supplies and reinforcements, having to pass through a region that is always a desert and sometimes a swamp, must be despatched with vast expense and loss. The conditions of the theatre of operations selected were then all in our favour; it only remained to provide adequately for the chances of war, to render the enterprise judicious.