sack and pillage and even billeting, and being quite incapable of the
magnificence of the great Condé (or was it Turenne?), who refused a
payment offered by a city on the ground that he had not intended to
march through it. Blucher's fury when Wellington would not allow him to
plunder Paris, and his exclamation when he saw London "What a city to
loot!" is still regarded as fair soldiering; and the blackmail levied
recently by the Prussian generals on the Belgian and French towns they
have occupied must, I suppose, be let pass as ransom, not as ordinary
criminal looting. But if the penalty of looting be thus spared, the
Germans can hardly complain if they are themselves held to ransom when
the fortunes of war go against them. Liège and Lille and Antwerp and the
rest must be paid their money back with interest; and there will be a
big builder's bill at Rheims. But we should ourselves refrain strictly
from blackmail. We should sell neither our blood nor our mercy. If we
sell either we are as much brigands as Blucher.


*Vindictive Damages.*

And we must not let ourselves be tempted to soil our hands under pretext
of vindictive damages. The man who thinks that all the money in Germany
could pay for the life of a single British drummer boy ought to be shot
merely as an expression of the feeling that he is unfit to live. We
stake our blood as the Germans stake theirs; and in that _ganz
besonderes Saft_ alone should we [missing text]r accept payment. We had
better **[missing text]y to the Kaiser at the end of the **[missing
text] "Scoundrel: you can never replace **[missing text] Louvain
library, nor the sculpture of Rheims; and it follows logically that you
shall empty your pockets into ours." Much better say: "God forgive us
all!" If we cannot rise to this, and must soil our hands with plunder,