FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37  
38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   >>   >|  
ritten on Louis Raemaekers. Moreover, this picture brings home to all of us in the most forcible manner possible the full reality of the horror of war. FRANCIS STOPFORD. [Illustration: FROM LIEGE TO AIX-LA-CHAPELLE] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SPOILS FOR THE VICTORS The feature that will stamp Prussian War forever, and make this group of campaigns stand out from all others, is the _character_ of its murder and pillage. Of all the historical ignorance upon which the foolish Pacifist's case is founded, perhaps the worst is the conception that these abominations are the natural accompaniment of war. They _have_ attached to war when war was ill organised in type. But the more subject to rule it has become, the more men have gloried in arms, the more they have believed the high trade of soldier to be a pride, the more have they eliminated the pillage of the civilian and the slaughter of the innocent from its actions. Those things belong to violent passion and to lack of reason. Modern war and the chivalric tradition scorned them. The edges of the Germanies have, in the past, been touched by the chivalric tradition: Prussia never. That noblest inheritance of Christendom never reached out so far into the wilds. And to Germany, now wholly Prussianized--which will kill us or which we shall kill--soldier is no high thing, nor is their any meaning attached to the word "Glorious." War is for that State a business: a business only to be undertaken with profit against what is certainly weaker; to be undertaken without faith and with a cruelty in proportion to that weakness. In particular it must be a terror to women, to children, and to the aged--for these remain unarmed. This country alone of the original alliance has been spared pillage. It has not been spared murder. But this country, though the process has perhaps been more gradual than elsewhere, is very vividly alive to-day to what would necessarily follow the presence of German soldiery upon English land. HILAIRE BELLOC. [Illustration: SPOILS FOR THE VICTORS "We must despoil Belgium if only to make room for our own culture."] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE VERY STONES CRY OUT If the highly organized enemy with whom we are at grips in a life-and-deat
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37  
38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

pillage

 

murder

 

attached

 
country
 

spared

 

soldier

 

undertaken

 
business
 

chivalric

 

tradition


Illustration

 

SPOILS

 
VICTORS
 

Prussianized

 

children

 
Germany
 

wholly

 

terror

 

Glorious

 

weaker


profit
 

cruelty

 
weakness
 

proportion

 

meaning

 

process

 

culture

 

Belgium

 
HILAIRE
 

BELLOC


despoil
 

STONES

 

highly

 

organized

 
English
 

gradual

 

alliance

 

original

 
remain
 

unarmed


follow

 

presence

 

German

 

soldiery

 
necessarily
 

vividly

 

character

 

campaigns

 
feature
 

Prussian