all victims to the valour of the Parisians, which is filling the
Fatherland with terror and admiration. The Gretchens are all
sentimental; they talk of their inner feelings like the heroines of
third-rate novels, send the object of their affections cigars and
stockings knitted by their own fair hands, and implore him to be
faithful, and not forget, in the toils of some French syren, poor
Gretchen. But what is more strange is that in the pocket of each corpse
a reply is found which he has forgotten to post. In this reply the
warrior tells a fearful tale of his own sufferings, and says that
victory is impossible, because the National Guards are such an
invincible band.

The number of the wounded in my hotel has considerably diminished owing
to the deaths among them. For the Societe Internationale to have made it
their central ambulance was a great mistake. Owing to the want of
ventilation the simplest operations are usually fatal. Four out of five
of those who have an arm or a leg amputated die of pyaemia. Now, as in
the American tents four out of five recover; and as French surgeons are
as skilful as American surgeons, the average mortality in the two
ambulances is a crucial proof of the advantage of the American tent
system. Under their tents there is perfect ventilation, and yet the air
is not cold. If their plan were universally adopted in hospitals, it is
probable that many lives which are now sacrificed to the gases which
are generated from operations, and which find no exit from buildings of
stone or brick, would be saved. "Our war," said an American surgeon to
me the other day, "taught us that a large number of cubic inches of air
is not enough for a sick man, but that the air must be perpetually
renewed by ventilation."

_December 24th._

The papers publish extracts from German newspapers which have been found
in the pockets of the prisoners who were taken on Wednesday. The news
from the provinces is not considered encouraging. Great stress is laid
upon a proclamation addressed by King William to his troops on December
6, in which it is considered that there is evidence that the Prussians
are getting tired of the war. We hear now, for the first time, that
Prussia has "denounced" the Luxemburg Treaty of '67, and forgetting that
the guarantee of neutrality with respect to these lotus-eaters was
collective, and not joint and several, we anxiously ask whether England
will not regard this as a _casus belli_. "As