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, at least let us call it plunder, and not profane our language and our souls by giving it fine names.

Our Annihilationists.

Then we shall have the Militarists, who will want to have Germany “bled to the white,” dismembered and maimed, so that she may never do it again.  Well, that is quite simple, if you are Militarist enough to do it.  Loading Germany with debt will not do it.  Towing her fleet into Portsmouth or sinking it will not do it.  Annexing provinces and colonies will not do it.  The effective method is far shorter and more practical.  What has made Germany formidable in this war?  Obviously her overwhelmingly superior numbers.  That was how she rushed us back almost to the gates of Paris.  The organization, the readiness, the sixteen-inch howitzer helped; but it was the multitudinous Kanonenfutter that nearly snowed us under.  The British soldier at Cambrai and Le Cateau killed and killed until his rifle was too hot to hold and his hand was paralyzed with slayer’s cramp; but still they came and came.

Why Not Kill the German Women?

Well, there is no obscurity about that problem.  Those Germans who took but an instant to kill had taken the travail of a woman for three-quarters of a year to breed, and eighteen years to ripen for the slaughter.  All we have to do is to kill, say, 75 per cent, of all the women in Germany under 60.  Then we may leave Germany her fleet and her money, and say “Much good may they do you.”  Why not, if you are really going in to be what you, never having read “this Neech they talk of,” call a Nietzschean Superman?  War is not an affair of sentiment.  Some of our newspapers complain that the Germans kill the wounded and fire on field hospitals and Red Cross Ambulances.  These same newspapers fill their columns with exultant accounts of how our wounded think nothing of modern bullet wounds and hope to be back at the front in a week, which I take to be the most direct incitement to the Germans to kill the wounded that could be devized.  It is no use being virtuously indignant:  “stone dead hath no fellow” is an English proverb, not a German one.  Even the killing of prisoners is