National enthusiasm, organisation, enterprise--all were on the side of the invaders.

As has been pointed out, their horsemen found out on the 23rd that the Chalons camp was deserted; on the next day their scouts found out from a Parisian newspaper that MacMahon was at Reims; and, on the day following, newspaper tidings that had come round by way of London revealed the secret that MacMahon was striving to reach Bazaine.
How it came about that this news escaped the eye of the censor has not been explained.

If it was the work of an English journalist, that does not absolve the official censorship from the charge of gross carelessness in leaving even a loophole for the transmission of important secrets.

Newspaper correspondents, of course, are the natural enemies of Governments in time of war; and the experience of the year 1870 shows that the fate of Empires may depend on the efficacy of the arrangements for controlling them.

As a proof of the superiority of the German organisation, or of the higher patriotism of their newspapers, we may mention that no tidings of urgent importance leaked out through the German Press.