transport waggons, amid the applause of his proud father's subjects.
He is of course carrying out the new gospel of the Fatherland that
everyone has a perfect right to whatever he is strong enough to take.
But some day that doctrine may spread from the exalted and sacred
circle in which it is now the guiding star to the "cannon fodder." Some
day the common people will have learnt the lesson which is being so
sedulously taught to them both by example and by precept, and then
the day of reckoning will have come.

Loot and destruction have always gone hand in hand. The private
soldier cannot carry loot, and it is one of the most primitive
instincts of animal nature to destroy rather than to leave that by
which others may profit. Even the pavement artist will destroy
his work rather than allow some poor wretch to sit beside his
pictures and collect an alms. And there is great joy in destroying
that which men are too coarse to appreciate, in feeling that
they have in their power that which, something tells them,
belongs to a refinement they cannot attain. That was the keynote
of the excesses of the French Revolution, for nothing
arouses the fury of the unclean so much as cleanliness, and a man
has been killed before now for daring to wash his hands. And it is this
elemental love of destroying that has raged through Belgium in the
last few months, for though destruction has been the policy of their
commanders, the German soldier has done it for love. No order could
ever comprehend the ingenious detail of much that we saw, for it bore
at every turn the marks of individuality. It is interesting to ponder on a
future Germany of which these men, or rather these wild beasts, will
be the sons. Germany has destroyed more than the cities of Belgium;
she has destroyed her own soul.