"I wonder if I may poison it?" Out comes the book, and he runs a
dirty forefinger down the index. "Ob fas est aquam hostis venere,"
etc. "Tut, tut, it's not allowed. But here are some of the enemy in
a barn? What about that?" "Ob fas est hostem incendio," etc. "Yes;
he says we may. Quick, Ambrose, up with the straw and the tinder
box." Warfare was no child's play about the time when Tilly sacked
Magdeburg, and Cromwell turned his hand from the mash tub to the
sword. It might not be much better now in a long campaign, when men
were hardened and embittered. Many of these laws are unrepealed, and
it is less than a century since highly disciplined British troops
claimed their dreadful rights at Badajos and Rodrigo. Recent
European wars have been so short that discipline and humanity have
not had time to go to pieces, but a long war would show that man is
ever the same, and that civilization is the thinnest of veneers.
Now you see that whole row of books which takes you at one sweep
nearly across the shelf? I am rather proud of those, for they are
my collection of Napoleonic military memoirs. There is a story told
of an illiterate millionaire who gave a wholesale dealer an order
for a copy of all books in any language treating of any aspect of
Napoleon's career. He thought it would fill a case in his library.
He was somewhat taken aback, however, when in a few weeks he
received a message from the dealer that he had got 40,000 volumes,
and awaited instructions as to whether he should send them on as
an instalment, or wait for a complete set.
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