"A war with Austria and England has many hopes of success and few chances of a reverse. To begin with, there are means of paralyzing Prussia, of even persuading her to join us and Russia; should that happen, the Netherlands could not declare themselves hostile. In the present condition of men's minds, forty thousand Frenchmen defending the Alps would rouse all Italy to action. "As for hostilities with England, if they were ever to commence, we should have either to throw twenty-five thousand more men into the Morea, or promptly recall our troops and our fleet. Give up squadron formation, disperse your ships singly over all the seas, give orders that all prizes are to be sunk after the crews have been removed, multiply your letters of marque in the ports of the four quarters of the globe, and soon Great Britain, forced by the bankruptcies and outcries of her trade, will sue for the restoration of peace. Did we not see her, in 1814, capitulate before the Navy of the United States, notwithstanding that this consists to-day of only nine frigates and eleven ships? "Considered in the two-fold respect of the general interests of society and of our own interests, the war of Russia against the Porte should give us no umbrage. On the principle of the higher civilization, the human race can only gain by the destruction of the Ottoman Empire: it is a thousand times better for the nations that the Cross should hold sway in Constantinople than the Crescent. All the elements of morality and of political society are at the root of Christianity, all the germs of social destruction are in the religion of Mahomet. They say that the present Sultan has taken steps towards civilization: is this because he has tried, with the assistance of a few French renegades, of a few English and Austrian officers, to submit his irregular hordes to regular exercises? And since when has the mechanical apprenticeship of arms constituted civilization? It is an enormous mistake, it is almost a crime, to have initiated the Turks into the science of our tactics; we must baptize the soldiers whom we discipline, unless we wish purposely to educate destroyers of society.