Note 46 — Chapter III · ROMA NOVA

Cf. Napoleon et Alexandre Ier, Vol. I, p. 268 (by Albert Vadal, Paris, 1869). The famous Field Marshal von Moltke expressed a similar opinion when he wrote, in 1846, “Rom wurde eine Weltstadt durch seine Männer, Konstantinople durch seine Weltstellung”—Rome was a world-city because of her men, Constantinople because of her world location. Gesammelte Schriften und Denkwürdigkeiten des General-Feldmarschalls, Tom. I, p. 165 (by Grafen Helmuth von Moltke, Berlin, 1892). Mr. D. G. Hogarth, in his valuable work, The Nearer East, declares: “No other site in the world enjoys equal advantages, nor perhaps ever will enjoy them. For the Isthmus of Suez is beset by deserts, and that of Panama has a climate not to be compared. Constantinople not only has an open and most fertile environment and easy access to the interior of both Europe and Asia, but its position between two seas and exposure on the side of Russia gives it an almost northern climate. Add to this a dry, sloping site, a superb harbor, an admirable outer roadstead, easy local communication by way of the Bosphorus and an inexhaustible water supply, and it is easy to agree that those who founded Chalcedon but left Byzantium to others, were indeed blind.” Pp. 240, 241 (New York, 1902).