General Andre, the French Minister of War, has done a
very good and bold act. He has ordered forty boxes of loot belonging to General Frey which have arrived in Marseilles to be seized, with a view to sending their contents back to China. His motive is said to be to prevent quarrels within the Army as to prize-money, but his colleagues in the Cabinet declare, through M. Delcassci, that they are entirely opposed to the system of looting which has been allowed to prevail in China. That system is unfair to the Army, which may thereby be robbed of half its legitimate prize-money, fatal to discipline, as a soldier loaded with loot thinks of everything but his duty, and cruel to the civil population. The German Government also has awoke to the danger, and looting has been severely prohibited ; but we fear, when the secret history of the Pekin tragedy is written, it will not be pleasant reading for those who believe in Rousseau. Men in a state of nature may be angels in Paris or Berlin, but they are devils in a captured city inhabited by a half-civilised population.
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