War--so certain of their own prophets have said--is a "national industry of Germany." Here we see a German _chevalier d' industrie_ attempting to escape with his swag. Never in modern times has a nation gone to war with a more cynical and shameless determination to make the campaign pay for itself by the plunder of private property. Quite recently an order was found on the body of a German, enjoining all officers to assist in the "patriotic duty" of "draining financially the occupied territories." We are dealing, not with an honourable and civilized nation, but with a band of murdering brigands. The keepers of the national conscience have devised a monstrous and barbarous code of ethics, in which "patriotism" is the sole duty, and the tribal god the only arbiter of right and wrong. As in Roman law, the property of an enemy is for a German _res nullius_--it has no owner. And now the prospect of any further loot on a large scale seems remote. The speculation has turned out badly, and the robber would be glad to cut his losses. The guardians of the law are at his heels, and do not mean to let him escape. But will they be able to make him disgorge? That will not be easy; and what atonement can be made for the innocent blood which drops from those pitiful spoils? W. R. INGE. [Illustration: WHAT ABOUT PEACE, LADS?] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE LIBERATORS This is one of those cartoons in which the neutral in Raemaekers speaks with peculiar force. Such a picture by a Britisher would reasonably be discounted as unduly prejudiced, for it is none too easy for us in our present stresses to see the other fellow's point of view--in this difficult business of the blockade for an instance. That friendly championing of the rights of neutrals suffering under the outrageous tyranny of the British Navy is a thing to which only the detached humour of a neutral can do justice. He can testify to the way in which the giant strength of that navy, whether in peace or war, has been used in the main not in the giants' tyrannous way; he can make allowance for the exigencies which have caused occasional arbitrariness under the stress of war or even in some untactful moment of peace; he can contrast the two main opposing navy's notions of justice, courtesy, seamanship--which is sportsmanship. He can recall that no single right whether of combatant or neutral, of state or individual, guaranteed by international law, which the Germans have found it convenient or "necessary" to violate has been left unviolated; that there is no single method or practice of war condemned by the common consent of civilization but has been employed by men who even have the candour to declare that they stand above laws and guarantees.