guarantee either its independence or its neutrality. If we do so, within ten years we shall infallibly be dragged into a Continental war. We have a whim about Belgium, one day it will prove a costly one; we cannot, however, afford to indulge in many of these whims. CHAPTER X. _November 3rd._ The vote is being taken to-day whether the population of Paris maintains in power the Government of National Defence. On Saturday each of the twenty arrondissements is to elect a Mayor and four adjuncts, who are to replace those nominated by the Government. Of course the Government will to-day have a large majority. Were it to be in the minority the population would simply assert that it wishes to live under no Government. This plebiscite is in itself an absurdity. The real object, however, is to strengthen the hands of the depositories of power, and to enable them to conclude an armistice, which would result in a Constituent Assembly, and would free them from the responsibility of concluding peace on terms rather than accept which they proudly asserted a few weeks ago they would all die. The keynote of the situation is given by the organs of public opinion, which until now have teemed with articles calling upon the population of the capital to bury itself beneath its ruins, and thus by a heroic sacrifice to serve as an example to the whole of France. To-day they say, "It appears that the provinces will not allow Paris to be heroic. They wish for peace; we have no right to impose upon them our determination to fight without hope of victory." The fact is that the great mass of the Parisians wish for peace at any price. Under the circumstances I do not blame them. No town is obliged to imitate the example of Moscow. If, however, it intends after submitting to a blockade, to capitulate on terms which it scouted at first, before any of its citizens have been even under fire, and before its provisions are exhausted, it would have done well not to have called upon the world to witness its sublimity. My impression is that on one point alone the Parisians will prove obstinate, and that is if the Prussians insist upon occupying their town; upon every other they will only roar like "sucking doves." Rather than allow the German armies to defile along the Boulevards, they would give up Alsace, Lorraine, and half a dozen other provinces. As regards the working-men, they have far more go in them than the bourgeois, and if the Prussians would oblige them by assaulting the town, they would fight well in the streets; but with all their shouts for a sortie, I estimate their real feelings on the matter by the fact that they almost unanimously, on one pretext or another, decline to volunteer for active service outside the ramparts.