vi PREFACE

peace forced on the despairing Em-
peror and his exhausted army, and,
going mad in its agonised resistance,
brought upon itself the horror of
French bayonets pointed at the breasts
of Frenchmen, to enforce obedience to
the arrogant terms of the Prussian
and the dictates of the Assembly,
probably the little Arab drummer
whom Daudet immortalises was not
the only brave soul in those days of
bewilderment who died an unwitting
rebel, ignorant on what side he was
fighting.

The pathos of “The Last Lesson”
and ‘The False Zouave” remind the
reader that the German annexation of
Alsace-Lorraine left a wound in the
pride of France that more than twenty
years of endurance have yet failed to

heal.
A. D. B. A.