26 NOVEMBER 1870, Page 3

The Times' correspondent at Tours is writing in a tone

curiously contrasted with that of the Times itself of a very few days ago. True, of late, the Tittles has begun to discover that the French cause is not hopeless, and therefore not unjust ; but a few weeks ago it would certainly have no more dreamt of admitting letters couched in the tone of its present Tours correspondence, than of allowing an Irishman to plead the cause of the Fenians in its columns. Last Wednesday's letter begins "This war of conquest,— for it were idle now to call it anything else,—waged by a fanatical old sovereign and his military cabinet, not against Napoleon and the Imperial Government, but against the civilians, women and children, homesteads and rural cottages of a people whose fault has long been submission to a degrading and demoralizing tyranny, —this war of conquest, of slaughter in cold blood, of rapine and fire-raising, does not promise soon to end." That is pretty well in the way of denunciation, and further than we can go ourselves. If the course of events tends for another fortnight in the French direction, the same style may get into the leading articles them- selves.