In his letters to the _Daily News_ during the autumn and winter of 1870 and 1871, he wrote from Paris commenting on the behaviour of the English and American officials of the Diplomatic Corps who remained in Paris during the siege. "Diplomats," he wrote on September 28th, "are little better than old women when they have to act in an emergency. Were it not for Mr. Washburne, who was brought up in the rough-and-ready life of the Far West, instead of serving an apprenticeship in Courts and Government offices, those who are still here would be perfectly helpless. They come to him at all moments, and although he cannot speak French, for all practical purposes, he is worth more than all his colleagues put together." In another letter he gives an amusing picture of the worried English chargé d'affaires, immersed in official trivialities: "A singular remonstrance has been received at the British Embassy. In the Rue de Chaillot resides a celebrated English courtesan, called Cora Pearl, and above her house floats the English flag. The inhabitants of the street request the Ambassador of England, 'a country, the purity and decency of whose manners is well known,' to cause this bit of bunting, which is a scandal in their eyes, to be hauled down. I left Mr. Wodehouse consulting the text-writers upon international law, in order to discover a precedent for {44} the case." It contrasts sharply enough with the glimpse he gives his readers of the American Embassy. "I passed the afternoon," he wrote on November 15th, "greedily devouring the news at the American Legation. It was a curious sight--the Chancellerie was crowded with people engaged in the same occupation. There were several French journalists, opening their eyes very wide, under the impression that this would enable them to understand English. A Secretary of Legation was sitting at a table giving audiences to unnumbered ladies who wished to know how they could leave Paris; or, if this was impossible, how they could draw on their bankers in New York. Mr. Washburne walked about cheerily shaking every one by the hand, and telling them to make themselves at home. How different American diplomatists are to the prim old women who represent us abroad, with a staff of half a dozen dandies helping each other to do nothing, who have been taught to regard all who are not of the craft as their natural enemies." Yet another quotation from Labouchere's journalistic correspondence, illustrating his predilection for things American: "The ambulance which is considered the best is the American. The wounded are under canvas, the tents are not cold, and yet the ventilation is admirable. The American surgeons are far more skilful in the treatment of gunshot wounds than their French colleagues. Instead of amputation they practise resection of the bone. It is the dream of every French soldier, if he is wounded, to be taken to this ambulance. They seem