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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 17, Issue 962, 10 March 1871, Page 3

We know enough of the present feelings of a large part of the German army and nation with respect to the war, to feel pure that Versailles and Berlin would rejoice to bring it to a close. But though Paris should quickly fall the war would not be over. You have read of the plan of Camps of Concentration, four of which, round seaport towns, are to be solidly fortified, to receive each 250,000 men, and to be protected and supplied by the fleet. These camps are to form the last refuge of belligerent France. When Paris shall have fallen and D'Au relies' and other armies have been beaten and scattered, there will still be a million of fight ing men, drilling and preparing to take the field. Such, at least, is the intention of the Tours Government How long the nation will support it in this desperate resistance d Veutrance remains to be seen.—Correspondent of London paper.

The London Spectator, December 24, say,- :—The Directors of the Union Bank are, it would seem, " impressed with the distress an 1 difficulties resulting from the early and improvident marriages of some of the junior clerks, who, without any other resources than their commencing salaries, soon find their incomes inadequate to meet the increased expenses entailed by marriage, and often by sickness in addition;" consequently, " acting in the interest of their clerks," they, on the 7ih December, issued a decree that any clerk who should marry on a salary of less than £l5O a year should "be considered to have resigned his appointment." It is really true, though this is 1870. The de cree which appears in extenso in ihe Times of Monday, must have passed a committee of grave English gentlemen of responsible position, and is actually defended, except so far as it is retro spective, by the City Editor of the Times. What a lot of people there are in the world who would be pronounced "impossible fools" if desciibed in novels.

A French paper says :-—One of our brave colonels of the army of the Rhine has left in Paris his young wife and her little daughter, aged four years. Every night before going to bed the child kneels at the feet of her mother, and prays for the dear absent one. After the traditional pater noster, Bebe added this little prayer of her own composing ■ —" May God preserve to me dear papa, and grant that he may kill many Prussians." The molher smiled sadly, and, taking the child on her knees, said—- " My little one, thou prayest the good God to kill many Prussians; but take care; down yonder perhaps there is a little German girl who asks on her side for (he death of many Frenchmen." Bebe reflected an instant, and then replied, with a convinced air— * ; Oh, that's nothing; the good God doesn't understand German. 1 '