With respect to the Persian Expedition[3] the Queen will not object to it--as the Cabinet appears to have fully considered the matter, but she must say that she does not much like it in a moral point of view. We are just putting the Emperor of Russia under the ban for trying "to bring the Sultan to his senses" by the occupation of part of his territory after a diplomatic rupture, and are now going to do exactly the same thing to the Shah of Persia! [Footnote 2: See _ante_, vol. ii, 18th October-26th November, 1853, notes 30, 31, 32.] [Footnote 3: Under the belief that Persia had declared war against Turkey, and that diplomatic relations between England and Persia were suspended, the Cabinet had agreed upon the occupation of the Island of Karak by a British force.] _The King of the Belgians to Queen Victoria._ LAEKEN, _9th January 1854._ MY DEAREST VICTORIA,--I wrote you a most abominable scrawl on Friday, and think myself justified in boring you with a few words to-day. The plot is thickening in every direction, and we may expect a great confusion. The dear old Duke used to say "You cannot have a little war." The great politicians of the Press think differently. The Duke told me also once: "At the place where you are you will always have the power to force people to go to war." I have used that power to _avoid_ complications, and I still think, blessed are the peacemakers. How the Emperor could get himself and everybody else into this infernal scrape is quite incomprehensible; the more so as I remain convinced that he did not aim at conquest. We have very mild weather, and though you liked the cold, still for every purpose we must prefer warmth. Many hundred boats with coal are frozen up, and I am told that near two hundred ships are wanting to arrive at Antwerp.... I am much plagued also by little parliamentary nonsense of our own here, a storm in a bottle; this is the way of human kind, and in such cases it always pleases me to think that I am not bound to be always their working slave, and I cast a sly look at my beautiful villa on the Lake of Como, _quite furnished_.... My beloved Victoria. Your devoted Uncle. LEOPOLD R. [Pageheading: THE PRESS] [Pageheading: THE FRENCH ALLIANCE] _The King of the Belgians to Queen Victoria._ LAEKEN, _13th January 1854._