Edmund Burke: "A War of a Peculiar Nature"

Edmund Burke:

Burke, "Letters on a Regicide Peace": We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about; not with a State which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system... with an armed doctrine.... It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country.... Thus advantaged, if it can at all exist, it must finally prevail...