The result of garnering in and renovating these cartridge cases instead of turning them adrift in the battle area, reckoned in figures of pounds, shillings, and pence, was undoubtedly very considerable; for apart altogether from the saving effected in the cost of labour when repairing old cartridge cases as compared with the manufacture of new ones, the weight of metal alone contained in a couple of million cases may be taken at approximately 1500 tons; and with yellow metal costing £82 12s. 0d. per ton, the saving in metal alone amounts to no less than £123,900. CHAPTER VI GUNNERY AND PROJECTILES (RUDIMENTARY NOTES AND NOTIONS) "The Prussian was born a brute, and civilisation will make him GOETHE. The apposite nature of this moral dictum could have been exemplified in no degree more accurately, nor indeed remarkably, than in the light of events which transpired during the forty odd years intervening between the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the present-day world conflict; events which may, perhaps, best be summarised as comprising a persistent policy of unremittant and so-called peaceful penetration, intense warlike preparation, and provocative "braggadocio," or diplomatic bluff. Born in an atmosphere of arrogance and lust, imbued with a spirit of savagery, the Hun stood forth at last in the blood-red dawn of "Der Tag," naked, stripped of his pharisaical veneer of social development. "Vous ne devez laisser," wrote Bismarck in 1870, "aux populations que vous traversez que leurs yeux pour pleurer," and clearly a decade of "Civilisation" had sufficed to make his countrymen indeed ferocious, to prove them obedient, albeit enthusiastic, disciples of the bestial doctrine which he had expounded. No longer was the soldier alone to be called upon to pass "half his time on the field of battle, and half of it on a bed of pain"; civilian populations too, innocent old men, defenceless women, young girls, and little children, all were to be drawn alike, pitilessly, into the vortex; naught but their eyes wherewith to weep remaining to them. One has but to refer again to that arresting little volume "Enseignements Psychologiques de la Guerre Européenne" (M. Gustave le Bon) to be reminded of the pre-determined methods that were to be adopted. "Notre principe directeur," Bismarck goes on to declare, "est de rendre la guerre si terrible aux populations civiles, qu'elles-mêmes supplient en faveur de la paix."