PTJHE Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 reached its climax in the siege of Paris, when a great population of non-combatants was reduced to destitution and felt from hour to hour the shock of hostile guns. From September 7, I870, to January 28, I87I, when an armistice was secured, this daily apprehension and threatening famine afflicted the city. The eminent statesman, Gabriel Hanotaux,1 has described in dramatic language the tragic situation. Nothing can bring back the gasping life of those last weeks, . . . the famine, the strange meats, cats, rats, the elephant from the Jardin des Plantes, . .. the epidemics, the rising mortality, the ill-omened birth of those who came into the world during these dark days. These shocking events touched the hearts of American citizens with a profound sense of compassion. Whatever their political sympathies had been through the earlier conflictand their affiliations with Germany were on the whole quite as binding as those with France -the terrific picture of distress in the beautiful city, and the tragic suffering of innocent multitudes, called for some expression of international fraternalism. It happened also that there were detained in Paris through