NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE negotiations between the French and North-German Governments were definitively broken off as long ago as Wed- nesday week, though the result was not positively known in London till last Monday. W e never expected from them any result. M. Jules Favre's memorandum on the subject, which was published at length only yesterday, and only then in one paper (the Daily Telegraph), is a curiously frank, inf ormal, and in many respects pathetic document, to the general accuracy and the complete truthfulness of which Count Bismarck himself appears to bear testimony. We need not here recount its substance, as that is discussed at length elsewhere, but will only mention one or two of the leading features of the negotiations. When M. Jules Favre objected to the cession of Alsace and Lorraine that Europe disapproves the cession of popu- lations without their own consent, and that in this case that consent was " more than doubtful," the Count replied, " I know well that they are not with us. They will impose an unpleasant job upon us, but we cannot help it. I am sure that in a short time we shall have a new war with you. We wish to make it with all our advan- tages,"—cynically candid enough. When, after urging strongly the impossibility of consenting that, in case of an armistice, the Stras- burg garrison should be prisoners of war,— a trivial point to Ger- many, and one on which, naturally enough, the French Minister felt that a vast deal would turn in its effect on the feeling of France,— the German Minister made this a final condition, M. Jules Favre says, " My strength was now exhausted, and I feared for an instant it would fail altogether ; I turned to hide the emotion which nearly choked me, and apologizing for my involuntary weakness, I took my leave." There is a wonderfully human air about the whole memo- randum, which impresses us very favourably in relation both to the sagacity and the temper of the unfortunate Minister who wrote it.
