Looting

“ Armed robbers roamed from hill to plain and back again, holding up and looting passing caravans, preying upon the miserable inhabitants in the remote villages, and relieving them of anything in the nature of food and live-stock that the greedy maw of Turk and Russian had inadvertently overlooked. ”

“ How surely in war one sheds the conventions of society! It has the attraction of buried treasure; the charm of getting something for nothing. But there are different ways or degrees of looting.
Now there were a few of us in German East Africa who had been in the Retreat from Mons and the subsequent advance to the Marne and beyond it to the Aisne. Indelibly engraved upon our minds were the pictures of French chateaux and farmhouses looted by the German troops in their advance and abandoned to us in their retreat. ”

“ We need not be hypocritical about this business of looting. I recognize that no army moves through occupied territory without some pilfering as it goes. Usually the amount of pilfering increases as discipline wanes. ”

“ As I now am able to see the matter in a cooler frame of mind, I realize that not only was efficiency carried out in warfare but in looting—for it seems that everything we possessed was systematically classified as good, bad or indifferent—the former and the latter being carefully packed into huge army supply carts, which for five long days stood backed up against our doorstep, leaving only when completely laden with spoils. ”

“ Individual looting is followed by the levying of war contributions so132 large as to be unpayable, and by the taking away of hostages to be shot or held prisoners till the payment of the full ransom, after the approved and classical method of brigandage. ”

“ Our French missionary padre tells me that it was just the same in Alsace. The incident at Zabern after the manoeuvres was entirely due to the disgust and indignation of the French people at the defiling of their beds and bedrooms by the German soldiers, who had been billeted upon them.
LOOTING
Looting, although you may not know it, is the natural impulse of primitive man. And in war we are very primitive. To take what does not belong to one is very natural when a man is persuaded that he can be absolved from the charge of theft by quoting military necessity. ”

“ Diary of Matbern, of the 4th Company of Jägers, states that at a village between Birnal and Dinant, on Sunday, August 23rd, "about 220 inhabitants were shot, and the village was burnt.... All villages, chateaux and houses are burnt down during the night. It is a beautiful sight to see the fires all round us in the distance."
Looting.
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The German troops, both in Belgium and France, are proved to have been guilty of persistent looting. ”

“ In dealing with any claims for compensation for having been looted, three things should be kept in mind—the complainant should prove that he was not a real Mahdist; that what he was looted of on the evening of the 2nd of September was not the proceeds of his own looting during the day; and, having got so far, should reconcile the fact of his having been looted of property and valuables with his tales of abject misery, poverty, and semi-starvation. ”

“ At some of the other fires dotted about they were roasting some unwary geese which had been foolish enough to stray round our camp. As the inhabitants of the houses had fled leaving them behind we certainly could not call it looting. [45] Looting was very firmly checked; the Serbian is far from being the undisciplined soldier in that respect that some people suppose. ”

“ On the basis of this and similar orders, the Germans ceaselessly looted the country under the pretext of so-called ‘control of existing stocks,’ using the opportunities afforded by the ‘destruction of localities which had been abandoned.’
“3. Punitive expeditions, which became an everyday event during the occupation, were, naturally, always accompanied by the looting of the victims’ property. In the same way they robbed their prisoners and the bodies of those who had fallen fighting in the Free National Army, as well as all the internees in the concentration camps. ”

“ Never do anything likely to injure or destroy property, and always look upon looting as a disgraceful act. You are sure to meet with a welcome, and to be trusted; your conduct must justify that welcome and that trust. ”

“ This robbery is not like theft of a horse or a sum of money that ceases with the act. It is a fresh and continuous robbery that goes on every day and every hour. It is not from the produce of the past that rent is drawn; it is from the produce of the present. It is a toll levied upon labour constantly and continuously. Every blow of the hammer, every stroke of the pick, every thrust of the shuttle, every throb of the steam engine, pays its tribute. It levies upon the earnings of those men who, deep underground, risk their lives, and of those who over white surges hang to reeling masts. ”

“ It is almost our daily experience to learn that, for the sake of obtaining gold and silver, doors are burst open, walls are pierced, wretched travellers are struck down by rapacious and cruel men born to theft, sacrilege, invasion, and robbery. We see thieves seized and strung up before us, sacrilegious persons burnt alive, the limbs of robbers broken on the wheel, wars waged for the same reason, which are not only destructive to those against whom they are waged, but to those also who carry them on. ”

“ Without the prospects of loot there would be no war. When ambition and glory lure a nation on, the desire for loot supplies the motor force. When hunger forces a people to invade a nation, loot becomes a necessity. ”

“ And if they do we are lost, one and all. Robbers in bands of twenty and thirty be ill enough, I trow; but when there come robbers enow for a whole army, with horse and foot, generals and captains, who take castles and put towns to ransom, what then?”
“Thou’rt right, Jacques. Wherever they have passed, ’tis as a flight of yon locusts whereof pilgrims tell. The whole face of the land is blasted!”
“Marry, thou say’st it, Paul; rich man’s hall or poor man’s hut, ’tis all one to them. Hath a peasant but one liard (halfpenny) sewn up in the lining of his hose, they will find and seize it!” ”

“ At times a stall was loaded with the spoils of a sunken ship or the loot from a city fire, and you could buy for a song the rare fabrics and costly dainties of the rich, a stain on the cloth, a discoloured label on the tin, alone giving a hint of their adventures. Then the people hovered round like wreckers on a hostile shore, carrying off spoil and treasure at a fraction of its value, exulting over their booty like soldiers after pillage. ”

“ And, Mate, the first thing the looters do when they enter a house is to snatch down the telephones and take them out to burn; for, as one rakish bandit explained, they were the talking-machines of the foreign devils and, if left, might reveal the names of the looters!
High-born ladies with two-inch feet stumble by, their calcimined faces streaked with tears and fright. Gray-haired old men shiver with terror and try to hide in any small corner. Lost children and deserted ones, frantic with fear, cling to any passer-by, only to be shoved into the street and often trampled underfoot. ”

“ With only one method of acquiring a legal foothold, hundreds of men, and not a few women, were found base enough to lend themselves to the scheme of the looters, and even old soldiers, who had shed their blood on the battlefields of their country, were lured into committing perjury by the fascination of the plunderers' gold. Most of them established a quasi right in a manner that it were a vain pity to call residence, and was seemingly done more for the purpose of maintaining a franchise on the right of possession, than through any honest effort^to make a permanent settlement. ”

“ They are the ones upon whom these crimes should be fastened; they are the ones who have waxed fat in the grease of loot at the expense of the rising generations of the West—who, after committing their base robberies, have attempted to affix its stain upon a proud-spirited people, and then laughed in their sleeves at the discomfiture they have caused by the lying insinuation—and it was the kind of laughter that is heard in hell over the loss of a soul. ”

“ Loot! loot! loot! If you've knocked a nigger edgeways when 'e's thrustin' for your life, You must leave 'im very careful where 'e fell; An' may thank your stars an' gaiters if you didn't feel 'is knife That you ain't told off to bury 'im as well. Then the sweatin' Tommies wonder as they spade the beggars under Why lootin' should be entered as a crime; So if my song you'll 'ear, I will learn you plain an' clear 'Ow to pay yourself for fightin' overtime. (Chorus) With the loot,... Now remember when you're 'acking round a gilded Burma god That 'is eyes is very often precious stones ”

“ The array of things a President has to worry about, besides war and confiscation, are enough to remove the glamour.”
All Villa knows about revenue is embodied in the word loot. Even in this fertile land, where every mountain is oozing with gold, silver, and copper, and every seed committed to the earth is ready to spring up a hundredfold, he who neglects to plant and dig can’t reap or garner. The whole north is one vast devastation and invitation to the specters of famine. ”

“ One of the most astounding features of the war is the way in which the Germans, from the highest to the lowest, have given themselves up to loot. In all previous wars between civilized countries anything in the nature of loot has been checked with a stern hand, and there are cases on record when a soldier has been shot for stealing a pair of boots. ”

“ For fight as they might with one another, all were at one in the plunder of the land. Towns were put to ransom. Villages were sacked and burned. All who were deemed to have goods, whether men or women, were carried off and flung into dungeons and tortured till they yielded up their wealth. ”

“ Loot, a word which had seemed to have died a natural death in favour of “commandeer,” is only a polite way of talking about the act of transferring some one else’s property to one’s own pocket, or as it happened in this case, to one’s own rickshaw. It was now the one topic of conversation, the one aim of every one able to roam the streets of Tientsin, unfettered by orders or scruples; and it is safe to say that every one, except the British soldiers and sailors, and other troops on duty, indulged in this pursuit at the earliest opportunity and to the fullest extent. ”

“ The communities mutually concerned so pass from the more or less precarious peaceful customs and animus common to the indigent lower cultures, to a more or less habitual attitude of predatory exploit. With the advent of warfare comes the war chief, into whose hands authority and pecuniary emoluments gather somewhat in proportion as warlike exploits and ideals become habitual in the community.101 More or less of loot falls into the hands of the victors in any raid. The loot may be goods, cattle if any, or men, women and children ”

“ If a merchant ransoms a soldier (?) or a constable who, on a journey of the king, was detained, and brings him back, to his city, if in his house there is sufficient ransom, he shall ransom himself. If in his house there is not sufficient to ransom him, by the temple of his city he shall be ransomed. If in the temple of his city there is not a sufficient ransom, he shall be ransomed by the palace. His field, garden, and house shall not be given for ransom. ”

“ The men carried, besides ammunition, arms, and accoutrements, poles to support their mats and skins, raw beef, chairs, tables, and round shot to make hearths. They were followed by women on horse and foot, the hideous lees of civilization, and by carts whose wheel-spokes were bound with hide, and which bore huge heaps of household " loot.'^ Being badly paid, and often not paid at all, the men must plunder to live. As might be expected from a force of the kind, there is no ardour for the cause, and esprit de corps is utterly unknown. ”

“ Of course they know it is plundered property from the price they give; and how could we have silk and fine linen for sale if not plundered? Our zamîndârs know we live by plunder, and take a fourth of the spoil. Sometimes they take such clothes as suit them. On returning from a highway robbery we use great expedition, travelling all night. During the day the plunder is concealed in dry wells; we disperse and hide in the fields. Two or three of the sharpest of the gang go to the nearest village for food, generally prepared food. ”

“ Often in the course of their raids, on entering the houses for loot, they would find whole families of dead bodies and the rooms filled with the victims of the famine, and then, shuddering at the sight, would retire empty-handed. ”

“ But little loot was taken, and every man kept what he could seize upon for his own. At the first hint of attack the women were laden with everything of value which could be stored in a secret magazine at some distance from the fortress; what remained was often destroyed by the burning of the huts. Williams sets down the loot of one chief whom he knew as seven balls of sinnet, several dogs and five female slaves, but he believed that part of this was pay and part plunder. ”

“ Presently a band of robbers coming by, and seeing the poor fellows asleep, with their heads upon the clothfuls of money, bound them hand and foot to some trees and took away their money, leaving them to bewail not only their wealth—which had slipped through their fingers as soon as found—but their life; for being without hope of succour, they were in peril of either soon dying of hunger or allaying the hunger of some wild beast. ”

“ Robbery and plunder became common, and that not only on the track of armies or the route of smaller bodies of soldiers, for bands of mere marauders, taking up the cry of the faction that happened in any neighbourhood to have the ascendancy, plundered houses, robbed travellers, and were guilty of all sorts of violence. ”