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 soon as Parliament assembles," says _La Verite_, "that great statesman Disraeli will turn out Mr. Gladstone, and then our old ally will be restored to us." The _Gaulois_ observes that "the English journalists residing at Paris keep up the illusion that Paris must fall by sending to their journals false news, which is reproduced in the organs of Prussia." "These journalists," adds the _Gaulois_, "who are our guests, fail in those duties which circumstances impose upon them." Every correspondent residing abroad must be the guest, in a certain sense, of the country from which he is writing; but that this position should oblige him to square his facts to suit the wishes of his hosts appears to me a strange theory. Had I been M. Jules Favre, I confess that I should have turned out all foreign journalists at the commencement of the siege. He, however, expressed a wish that they should remain in Paris, and his fellow-citizens must not now complain that they decline to endorse the legend which, very probably, will be handed down to future generations of Frenchmen as the history of the siege of Paris. The Prussians will not raise the siege for anything either French or English journalists say.