primitive man. And in war we are very primitive. To take what does not
belong to one is very natural when a man is persuaded that he can be
absolved from the charge of theft by quoting military necessity. How
surely in war one sheds the conventions of society! It has the
attraction of buried treasure; the charm of getting something for
nothing. But there are different ways or degrees of looting.

Now there were a few of us in German East Africa who had been in the
Retreat from Mons and the subsequent advance to the Marne and beyond it
to the Aisne. Indelibly engraved upon our minds were the pictures of
French chateaux and farmhouses looted by the German troops in their
advance and abandoned to us in their retreat. All along the countless
roads the German transport had pressed, hurrying to the Aisne, were
evidences of the loot of German officers and men. In roadside ditches,
half buried in the late summer vegetation, were pictures and bronzes,
china and statuary, the loot the German officer had chosen to adorn the
walls of his ancestral Schloss. Marble figures leant drunkenly against
the wayside hedges, big brass clocks strewed the ditches. Long before,
of course, had the German rank and file been compelled to jettison their
prizes, for the transport horses were nearly foundered and only
officers' loot could be retained. Later, when the exhaustion of the
horses was complete, and capture of the waggons seemed imminent, the
regimental equipment and food supply, and, finally, the loot of high
officers had to be abandoned. The whole story of that retreat was to be
read in the discard by the roadside. The regimental butcher had clung to
his meat and the implements of his trade until the last; and when we
found the roads littered with carcases of oxen, sacks of pea flour and
sausage machines, we knew that we would shortly find the General's loot
beside the hedge.