How French Soldiers fared in German Prisons. By Canon Guess,
Army Chaplain to the French Forces. Edited by H. Hayward. (Dean and Son.)—Here we have the experiences of a French priest who during the Franco-German War ministered to the spiritual wants of the French prisoners in Germany,—to the extent, at least, that they would accept any religious ministrations 'whatever. For what struck Canon Guess as much as anything he witnessed in the course of his labours, was the indifference to religion displayed by the Catholic soldiers of France in comparison 'With the unpretending but serious piety of the Protestant Soldiers of Germany, He was also much exercised by the sPactsscle of Catholic prisoners being far more kindly treated
in the Protestant than in the Catholic localities where they were confined. It was from Catholic Bavaria that M. Guess himself was rudely expelled, in Protestant W urtomberg that his efforts were appreciated and seconded. At Stuttgart, however, repre- sentations of the Battle of Sedan were given in which, "amid a general silence a long procession of French army chaplains, sisters of mercy, and hospital friars came upon the scene, and coldly plundered the dead and wounded, finishing the latter with revolver-shots if they made the slightest resistance." We do not understand the Canon to say he himself saw this "popularisa- tion of German history," as he avers the Stuttgart journals called these representations, and there can be little doubt that he has merely lent too ready an ear to some informant more hostile to the Germans than friendly to truth.
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