GENERAL SHERIDAN AND THE FRANCO- PRUSSIAN WAR.
[To ram Eseroa or THE "BrEcTATOR."1 SIR,—I quote the following :— " During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 General Sheridan visited Europe, and was present as a spectator with the German forces at several celebrated engagements. He was held in high esteem by Prince Bismarck and Count von Moltke. After the sanguinary battle of Gravelotte, which Sheridan witnessed, Bismarck returned with the King to Pont-3-Monson, and on the evening of the next day the German Chancellor entertained to dinner General Sheridan and his American companions, • with whom he talked eagerly in good English, while champagne and porter circulated.' At one point of the Franco-German War, when Bismarck was at Versailles, anxiously desiring a French Govern- ment with which he could conclude a durable peace, • It almost seemed,' says Mr. Lowe in his Life of Bismarck, 'as if he bad no other resource but to pursue the war on the principles laid down by General Sheridan.' The American soldier had said to the Chancellor: ' First deal as hard blows at the enemy's soldiers as possible, and than cause so much suffering to the inhabitants of the country that they will long for peace and press their Government to make it. Nothing should be left to the people but eyes to see and lament the war !'"—Obituary Notice, Times, Tuesday, August 7th, 1888 Germany has applied this precept in her invasion of Belgium, but has not taken into account the growth of the conception of freedom which the passage of forty-three years has brought, and which has enabled the inhabitants of that stricken land to resist to the last the dominance of a brutal mediaeval foe. Americans would to-day be the first to repudiate such a Bethlehem, Orange Free State.
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