ice of that "glory" which, the poet sings
truly, "leads but to the grave!"

Fritz was sickened with it all; but, what struck his keen sense of
honour and honesty more, was the wholesale pillage and robbery permitted
by the German commanders to be exercised by their soldiery on the
defenceless peasantry of France. A cart which he overhauled, proceeding
back to the frontier, contained such wretched spoil as women's clothes,
a bale of coffee, a quantity of cheap engravings and chimney ornaments,
an old-fashioned kitchen clock, with an arm-chair--the pride of some
fireside corner--a quantity of copper, and several pairs of ear-rings,
such as are sold for a few sous in the Palais Royale!

The sight of this made his blood boil, and Fritz got into some trouble
with a colonel of Uhlans by ordering the contents of the cart to be at
once confiscated and burnt, the huckster being on the good books of that
officer--doubtless as a useful collector of curios!

It was a current report amongst the French at the time that the German
army was followed by a tribe of Jew speculators, who purchased from the
soldiers the plunder that they certainly could not themselves expect to
carry back to their own country; and this incident led Fritz to believe
the rumour well founded.

"Heavens, little mother," as he wrote home subsequently to Madame Dort,
after his experience of what went on at headquarters under his new
commander. "I do not fear the enemy; but the only thing which will do
us any harm, God willing that we come safely home, is that we shall not
be able to distinguish between mine and thine, the `meum' and `tuum'
taught us at school, for we shall be all thorough thieves; that is to
say, we are ordered to take--`requisition' they call it--everything that
we can find and that we can use. This does not confine itself alone to
food for the horses and people, but to every piece of portable property,
not an absolute fixture, which, if of any value, we are directed to
appropriate and `nail' fast!

"Through the desertion of most of the castles here in the neighbourhood
by their legitimate proprietors, the entry to all of them is open to us;
and now everything is taken out of them that is worth taking at all.
The wine-cellars in particular are searched; and I may say that our
division has drank more champagne on its own account than I ever
remember to have seen in the district of Champagne, when I visited it
last year before the war.