The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-28 00:00:00

THEATRES, AND AMUSEMENTS.

DRURY LANE—RuIe Britannia. Dragon of Wantley.
COVENT GARDEN—Lottery Ticket. Sleeping Beauty.
ADELPIH—Smoke. Mistletoe Bough.
HAYMARKET—The Poor Soldier. The Palace of Truth.
Uncle's Will. The Spectre Bridegroom.
VAUDEVILLE—ChiseIIing. Two Roses. Elizabeth, or

the Invisible Armada:
STRAND—On and Off. Living at Ease. Coeur-de-

Lion.
ST. JAMES'S—To Oblige Benson. Fernande. Bombastes

Furioso.
OLYMPlC—Poppleton's Predicament. Nell and (Bur-
lesque) Paul and Virginia.
ROYALTY - Wealth, and Whittington Junior and his

Sensation Cat.
GAIETY—A Christ►nas Story. Alladin 11.
QUEEN'S—Farce. Midsummer Night's Dream.
GLOBE—Board and Residence. Delicate Ground. The

White Cat. Rely on my Discretion.
OPERA COMIQUE—Found Drowned. Nothing to Nurse.
HOLBORN—The Married Bachelor. A Breach of Promise.
Jezab el.
PRINCE OF WALES'S. Queen Stork. Ours. Locked
In.
PRINCEr3S'S—A Christmas Carol. Little Gil Blas. He's
a Lunatic.
NATIONAL STANDARD—Farce. Ride a Cock Horse to
Banbury Cross.
ASTLEY'S—Farce. Little Tom Tittlemouse.
SADLER'S WELLS—Farce. Sinbad the Sailor.
SURREY—Farce. My Son Jack.
POLYTECHNIC--Professor Pepper's War Lecture. After-

noon and Evening.
EGYPTIAN HALL—Poole and Young's Panorama of the

Franco-Prussian War.
AMPHITHEATRE AND CIRCUS (Holborn)—Scenes in the
Arena.
ST. JAMES'S HALL.—Christy Minstrels. Every evening.

LONDON., WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 28.1870.

WHEN is England to interfere between the belli-
gerents ? The understanding has been all along that
the time has rot yet arrived for interference. Under
what circumstances will it be considered that the
appointed juncture has arrived ? It will be depen-
dent, we are left to presume, upon the amount of
blood and iron expended by the confronting artniee.
Eiti'er England must yield her right to be regarded
any longer as a just Power, having a voice in the
council of Europe, so she must break at last from her
heartless apathy in regard to the continuance of this
appalling conflict. The friend and ally of both
nations, she has surely a duty to each no less than to
herself, to her conscience, and to her own glorious
antecedents. England has been allied with Prussia
against France, it is true, on the bloody field of
Waterloo. But that was more than halt a century
ago. Whereas it is little more than a dozen years
since the soldiers of France and England were
fighting side by side, as " l3rothers in arms and rivals
in renown," on the glorious battle grounds in the
Crimea, as well as in China and Japan. In defensive
and offensive alliance no two nations could have
been more intimately associated than France and
England during the eighteen years of the reign of
the Emperor NAPOLEON 111. Under his auspices
the whole commercial policy of France was associated
with our own. Free Trade principles, were at the
instance of NAPOLEON, substituted for the old-world
principles of Protection. A mercantile treaty was
negotiated at the Palace of the Tuileries—between
whom, as the representative of the two countries ?
between an English plenipotentiary and the French
sovereign himself ! Between Mr. COBDEN and the
Emperor NAPOLEON. So completely iu harmony
were the two nations, that at last, by a stroke of his
pen, the Emperor abolished the whole system of
passport as thenceforth unnecessary. When the
Indian Mutiny broke out, NAPOLEON proffered assis-
tance to the British Government. At' intervals,
during his twenty-one years' tenure of power as
chief of the State, and head of the French Govern-
ment, under different titles, now as President, now
as Emperor, when assailed by Englishmen with
peculiar virulence, as, for example, upon the morrow
of the coup d'etat, and afterwards, when indecent
cheering in our English courts of justice welcomed
the acquittal of a sworn accomplice of the assassin
OE SlNl—the now captive at Wilhelmshohe remained
throughout at those times perfectly impassive and
unirritated. The nations were friends and allies
uninterruptedly. The Courts were in the completest
amity. The Governments were thoroughly cordial
in their intercommunications. Nevertheless, after
all this, after a series of years so passed, a
sanguinary war breaks forth between Francs and
Germany—the fortunes of the war in the most asto-
nishing manner go against France and for Germany
—the ExpEnon, our ally, is taken :prisoner, the
French, our allies, are ruthlessly assailed by the in-
vading Germans after the Imperial forces have been
dispersed and carried away captive to the number of
300,000 into Germany—yet England, when half a
year of the war has gone by, moves not one finger
to stay the cruel work of slaughter and devastation.
The EMPEROR, our friend and ally, having played
his cards out to the last, and played them badly, we
may leave uncared for, if we plea€e, in his retirement
at Wilhelnishohe. But France—Franca now bleed-
ing from innumerable wounds, France overrun by
hordes of German soldiery, France with her radiant
capital beleaguered, with her fairest provinces
ravaged by battle after battle, with her proudest
cities and fortifications, her "virgin fortress" of
Metz and her royal city of Orleans taken possession
of by the legions of the Prussian WILLIAM—France
our neighbour, our fast friend during all these years,
aryl our true ally, in war and in peace, has Englan 1
no wish even to interpose in her behalf ? The time
for interposition, it is said, has not yet arrived.
When will it have arrived? Remembering Count
BISMARCK'S brutal phrase, we are fain almost to ask
him, after how much more blood and iron have been
ruthlessly squandered ?

TOPICS OF THE DAY.