This effect of fear upon the dull soul is a characteristic familiar to all men who know their Prussian from history, particularly the wealthier governing classes of Prussia. It is a characteristic which those who are in authority during this war will do well to bear in mind. Properly used, that knowledge may be made an instrument of victory. HILAIRE BELLOC [Illustration: BERNHARDIISM “It’s all right. If I hadn’t done it someone else might.”] “Moreover, by the means of Wisdom I shall obtain immortality, and leave behind me an everlasting memorial to them that come after me. “I shall set the people in order, and the nations shall be subject unto me. “Horrible tyrants shall be afraid, when they do but hear of me; I shall be found good among the multitude, and valiant in war.” (Wisdom viii. 13, 14, 15.) * * * * * Wisdom and Wisdom alone could have painted this terrible picture--the most terrible perhaps which Raemaekers has ever done and yet the simplest. That he should have dared to leave almost everything to the imagination of the beholder is evidence of the wonderful power which he exercises over the mind of the people. Each of us knows what is in that goods-van and we shudder at its hideous hidden freight, fearing lest it may be disclosed before our eyes. Wisdom is but another name for supreme genius. So apposite are the verses which are quoted here from “The Wisdom of Solomon” in the “Apocrypha” that they seem almost to have been written on Louis Raemaekers. Moreover, this picture brings home to all of us in the most forcible manner possible the full reality of the horror of war. FRANCIS STOPFORD [Illustration: FROM LIÈGE TO AIX-LA-CHAPELLE] The feature that will stamp Prussian War for ever, and make this group of campaigns stand out from all others, is the _character_ of its murder and pillage. Of all the historical ignorance upon which the foolish Pacifist’s case is founded, perhaps the worst is the conception that these abominations are the natural accompaniment of war. They _have_ attached to war when war was ill organised in type. But the more subject to rule it has become, the more men have gloried in arms, the more they have believed the high trade of soldier to be a pride, the more have they eliminated the pillage of the civilian and the slaughter of the innocent from its actions. Those things belong to violent passion and to lack of reason. Modern war and the chivalric tradition scorned them.