TRANSLATOR'S NOTE AT a time when Englishmen and Frenchmen are brothers-in-arms, a translation of this curious and little known narrative may be of interest. It is a record of a somewhat remarkable episode in a stormy and remarkable year. It describes, possibly not without the inevitable bias of one sent on a forlorn hope, the necessary refusals of Gladstone and Lord Granville to intervene in favour of France. But, as the writer quite prophetically declares, the surrender of Alsace-Lorraine and the aggrandisement of Prussia were fated to be the inevitable stumbling-block to peace in Europe, and so not without moment to England. This we now know only too well. 1870 was to be the prelude of 1914. Frederic Reitlinger was not by profession a diplomatist, though circumstances gave him this role for a brief and not inglorious moment. He achieved some distinction at the Bar in Paris under the Second Empire, and at the request of Napoleon III., made an exhaustive study of the co-operative