We hear much in these days from peacefully-minded lawyers of the iniquity of reprisals. It would be a good thing if some of these learned gentlemen would remember the old adage, “Inter arma silent leges;” adding to it the words, “et juris consulti.” It is good to see on this 3rd of February, 1916, that there is at least one great leader of thought left in this country who takes a saner and more masculine view of reprisals than that which is held by some bishops and semi-parsonic lawyers. Lord Rosebery’s letter to the _Times_ of this day is inexorable in its logic and in its justice. We must protect our women and children. This is an age of cruel inventions, and if our enemies take advantage of them, so must we, unless we would wish to be as the archers of Edward the Third and the Black Prince would be if we sent them into the trenches to-day, forbidden for chivalrous reasons to use aught but their bows against modern artillery and high explosives. If Germany uses poison gas and liquid fire, so must we. If she drops bombs from airships upon innocent civilians, women, and children, we must follow suit. God forbid that it should be in the spirit of revenge; but what other deterrent is possible? “Vous l’avez voulu, Georges Dandin.” It is much that Lord Rosebery has lifted his voice in this sense. Gallifet did not hesitate to adopt reprisals, and nobody can say that his methods failed. He knew that the crimes with which he had to deal could not be prevented in the future by the sprinklings of rose-water and soft-sawder. Reprisals in the sense of cruelty to prisoners and murders such as that of Nurse Cavell and Captain Fryatt, are, of course, quite another matter. I could not help taking a great interest in Gallifet’s proceedings, because, although I had only had the very slightest acquaintance with him some ten years before, he was the intimate friend of many friends of my own, both English and French. The Prince of Wales, as he then was, had great regard for him, and never failed to send for him when he went to Paris. It must have been about the year 1859 or 1860 that he, with Madame de Gallifet, the Sagans and the Pourtalès’s, came over to London for a week or ten days in the height of the summer season, and I was asked by Madame de Persigny, the French ambassadress, to do what I could to make their stay pleasant. The three ladies, with Madame de Metternich as a fourth, were at that time the recognized queens of Paris society, or, at any rate, of that part of it which bowed the knee at the Imperial Court. Madame de Gallifet was very good-looking, and the Princesse de Sagan handsome and distinguished, but neither of them could compare with the Comtesse de Pourtalès, who had all the subtle charm and teasing beauty of which the eighteenth century portrait painters are the celebrants.