enteenth and
eighteenth centuries, a time when it seemed to be the ordinary state
of affairs for some, at least, of the European countries to be at war
with one another. _Bivouac_ is a word which was used a good deal in
descriptions of earlier wars. It is a German word, which came into
English at the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) in Germany.
It means an encampment for a short time only (often for the night),
without tents. It plainly has not much connection with modern trench
warfare.

Another word which came from the German at the same time may serve to
remind us that the German soldier of to-day is not very much unlike
his ancestors of three hundred years ago. The word _plunder_ was
originally a German word meaning "bed-clothes" or other household
furnishing. From the fact that so much of this kind of thing was
carried off in the fighting of this terrible war, the word came to
have its present sense of anything taken violently from its rightful
owner. It must be confessed that the word was also used a great deal
in the English Civil War, which was, of course, fought at the same
time as the end of the Thirty Years' War.

It was also in the English Civil War that we first find the word
_capitulation_, which now generally means to surrender on certain
conditions. Before this, _capitulation_ had more the meaning which it
still keeps in _recapitulation_. It meant an arrangement under
headings, and the word probably was transferred from describing the
terms of surrender to describing the surrender itself.

One of the many words connected with war which came into the English
language from the French in the seventeenth century was _parade_,
which means the showing off of troops, and came into French from an
Italian word which itself came from the Latin word _parare_, "to
prepare." Another of these words which has been much used in
descriptions of the battles of the Great War, and especially in the
"Battle of the Rivers" in the autumn of 1914, is _pontoon_. Pontoons
are flat-bottomed boats by means of which soldiers make a temporary
bridge across rivers, generally when the permanent bridges have been
destroyed by the enemy. The word is _ponton_ in French, and comes from
the Latin _pons_, "a bridge." Most words of this sort in French ending
in _on_ take the ending _oon_ in English. Thus _ballon_ in French
becomes _balloon_ in English. _Barracks_ also comes from the French
_baraque_, and the French had it from th