The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-29 00:00:00

THEATRES, AND AMUSEMENTS.

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

Elizabeth, or

the Invisible Armada.
STRAND—On and Off. Living at Ease.

Lion.

Cceur•de

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 Christmas Story. Alladin 11.
QUEEN'S—Farce. Midsummer Night's Dream.
GLOBE—Board and Residence. Delicate Ground.
White Cat. Rely on my Discretion.
OPERA ComiQuE—Found Drowned. Nothing to Nurse,
HOLBORN—The Married Bachelor. A Breach of Promise,
Jezabel.

PRINCE OF WALES'S. - Queen Stork. Ours.
In.

The

Locked

PRINCEi3B'S—A Christmas Carol. Little Gil Blas. He's

a Lunatic.

NATIONAL STANDARD—Farce.
Banbury Cross.

Ride a Cock Horse

ASTLEY'S— Farce. Little Tom Tittlemouie.
SADLER'S WELLS—Farce. Sinbad the Sailor.

SURREY—Farce. My Son Jack.
POLYTECIINIC—Professor Pepper's War Lecture. After.

noon and Evening.

EGYPTIAN HALL— Poole and Young's Panorama of the
Franco-Prussian War.

AMPHITUEATRE AND CIRCUS (Holborn)—Scenes in the

Arena.

ST. JAMES'S HALL.—Christy Minstrelg. Every evening

PALMS lloYaL—Professor Faber's _Calking Machine

ALnamßria—Promenade Concert.
MADAME TUSSAUD'S (Baker-street) —From 10 a.m. till 10
p.m. 1.5.; extra rooms, 6d.

trk. ;
nit 4.4,C*'°910X *Vat.

,ONDON, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 29 1870.

THE bombardment has commenced. At seven
o'clock yesterday morning the siege artillery opened
fire—that is, the infernal work began upon the very
l!ay after the morrow of Christmas. There is a cool
precision about the whole of the proceedings of the
Government whose policy is directed by Count
BISMARCK, that outrages public opinion and strikes
at the very conscience of Christendom. To
open the bombardment at all,. is of itself
monstrous under the circumstances; but it is
peculiarly monstrous doing so upon the morrow
of
.the Feast of the Nativity., The war, as Count
BIsMARCK's King, or Emperor, or however else he
may please to call him, distinctly and most emphati-
cally intimated when the campaign began, was a war
undertaken by Prussia, not against France, but
against the French army and the French EMPEROR,
The Imperial army, to the number of upwards of
300,000 men, is distributed in durance, here and there,
in various parts of Germany. The Emperor NAPOLEON
is long since establishel as a prisoner of war in his
place of captivity, the Palace of Willelmshohe.
With France, avowedly, King WILLIAM had no
cause of quarrel when the war commenced. At the
time of the capitulation at Sedan he might have
closed the war had he so pleased, by a stroke
of his pen, and entered at once into negu-
ciations for the conclusion of an honour-
able pacification. That opportunity he wan-
tonly cast to the winds. The greed of conquest
bad been engendered. The lust of slaughter, hunger
and thirst for more and more blood and iron impelled
him onwards. Having his heel upon the sword
NAPOLEON ',had placed at his feet, the old. KING set
his heart upon having that heel of his next upon the

throat ofFrance. He wanted to send tw o or threeUblans
on before him to ride into Paris, if possible, and
insolently summon its inhabitants to make ready for
his reception. Along the Parisian boulevards, he must
ride in triumph, before his final ovation, when he
should return to his Berlin palace, Unter den Linden,
as Emperor of Germany. Hence all the calamities that
have since befallen unfortunate France, hence all the
increasing destruction of life that has occurred to
the German host, no less than to the armies of De-
fence that have been called into existence upon the scat-
tering of the Imperial Army of the Rhine. Hence, all
this hideous prolongation of the war is clearly and
solely traceable to the pride and ambition and im-
placable resentment of the Prussian King
or German Emperor, whom nothing could
satisfy after Sedan, but the seizure of Paris itself,
and the absolute humiliation not of the French
army, for that was scattered, not of the French
Emperor, for NaisoLtoN was in captivity, but
of the French nationality. From the moment
when King WILLIAM ventured upon this heart-
less course, ho put himself and his Go-

vernment in the wrong in the presence
of all Christendom. Every day that has since
elapsed, every additional life that has since been sac-
rificed, has only helped to make bad worse, has put
him in the wrong simply more and more. M. THIERB
has in vain endeavoured to secure to his country
some honourable terms of pacification. Lord GRAN-
viLLE has, by despatch after despatch, striven
to prepare the way for some compromise
between the belligerents. Alsace and Lorraine,
Metz and Strasburg, the pound of flesh and abso-
lute humiliation—those are the terms inexorably
demanded from forty million Frenchmen. No won-
der the cruel conditions are disdainel. The wonder
is only that the war can be allowed thus wantonly
to run on towards its bitter end without the raising
of a hand or of a voice against it from among the
surrounding nations of Christendom.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.