A meeting of the Conference Francaise was held last evening, at which Professor Colm related some of his experiences during the siege of Paris. Among the general points of interest were the following:-

In the fall before the German troops had closed in about Paris, the French troops were for the most part employed outside the line of forts which surrounded the city, and were protected only by a slight barricade. These barricades were formed of masonry and were intended to have been surmounted by bags of earth to break the force of the shells, but as time failed for the completion of the works, bags of potatoes taken from the peasants who were hurrying into Paris, were used instead of bags of earth, and so great was the lack of provisions among the soldiers that they were forced actually "to eat their defences." Although there were between two and three hundred thousand men around Paris, the number of real soldiers was not more than forty thousand. Among the troops the National Guard of Paris was conspicuous for their bravery and the efficiency of their service. This body was made up of the young men of Paris, who were not at all inured to the hardships of war, and who were armed with a gun just introduced and with the action of which they were entirely unacquainted. The troops around Paris were exposed to great hardships, from both hunger and cold, and in moving from one place to another were forced, on account of the number of men and the narrowness of the roads, to stand waiting almost for hours before being able to move forward. This proved even more fatiguing than constant marching.