not will be ashamed to bear malice publicly.

*The Commercial Attitude.*

Far more weighty in the matter will be the intermediate sections. First,
our commercial main body, which thinks that chivalry is not business,
and that rancour is childish, but cannot see why we should not make the
Germans pay damages and supply us with some capital to set the City
going again, forgetting that when France did that after 1871 for Berlin,
Berlin was set going so effectually that it went headlong to a colossal
financial smash, whilst the French peasant who had provided the capital
from his old stocking throve soberly on the interest at the expense of
less vital classes. Unfortunately Germany has set the example of this
kind of looting. Prussian generals, like Napoleon's marshals, have
always been shameless brigands, keeping up the seventeenth and
eighteenth century tradition of making cities bribe them to refrain from
sack and pillage and even billeting, and being quite incapable of the
magnificence of the great Conde (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. Liege 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 **[miss