"You Prussian beggars, you Prussian scoundrels, you bandits and you Vandals, you have taken everything from us; you have ruined us; you are starving us; you are bombarding us; and we have a right to hate you with a royal hatred. Well, perhaps one day we might have forgiven you your rapine and your murders; our towns that you have sacked; your heavy yokes; your infamous treasons. The French race is so light of heart, so kindly, that we might perhaps in time have forgotten our resentments. What we {135} never shall forget will be this New Year's Day, which we have been forced to pass without news from our families. You, at least, have had letters from your Gretchers, astounding letters, very likely, in which the melancholy blondes with blue eyes make a wonderful literary salad, composed of sour kraut, berlin wool, forget-me-nots, pillage, bombardment, pure love, and transcendental philosophy. But you like all this just as you like jam with your mutton. You have what pleases you. Your ugly faces receive kisses by the post. But you kill our pigeons, you intercept our letters, you shoot at our balloons with your absurd _fusils de rempart_, and you burst out into a heavy German grin when you get hold of one of our bags, which are carrying to those we love our vows, our hopes, our remembrances, our regrets, our hearts." And so on. Labouchere had not a high opinion of French journalism during the investment. "A French journalist," he says, "even when he is not obliged to do so, generally invents his facts, and then reasons upon them with wonderful ingenuity. One would think that just at present a Parisian would do well to keep his breath to cool his own porridge. Such, however, is not his opinion. He thinks that he has a mission to guide and instruct the world, and this mission he manfully fulfils in defiance of Prussians and Prussian cannons. It is true, that he knows rather less of foreign countries than an intelligent Japanese Daimio may be supposed to know of Tipperary, but, by some curious law of nature, the less he knows of a subject, the more strongly does he feel impelled to write about it. I read a very clever article this morning pointing out that if we are not on our guard, our Empire in India will come to an end by a Russian fleet attacking it from the Caspian Sea. When one thinks how very easy it would have been for the author not to have written about the Caspian Sea, one is at once surprised and grateful to him for having called our attention to the danger which menaces us in that quarter of the globe." {136}