Under the War Clouds. By E. F. Pollard. (Sunday School
Union.)—We have not had many tales of the Franco-Prussian War, perhaps because, with the exception of the Siege of Paris, events moved too rapidly, and the fortune of war was too obviously on one side. In the tale before us, the trials and sufferings of an English family furnish an interesting plot. The son volunteers as a surgeon, and the daughter is engaged to a French officer, and their adventures thread a vivid description of some of the sadder and most humiliating episodes of the war. We realise once again what the almost inconceivable mortification of the French Army and some of its officers must have been at the continuous and disastrous ill-fortune and bungling of their commanders. It is a readable story, and if scarcely cheerful at times, ends happily; it also makes a capital introduction to the history of the campaign.
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