“I Must Have Something for My Trouble”
You shall, Germany, you shall!
You shall have even more than ever you expected—but not after the manner of your expectation.
Even the burglar who, after long and arduous and risky training in his profession, and careful plotting and planning, and detailed hard work with jimmies and blowpipes and center-bits, has collared the swag and been caught in the act, does not whine like this. If he is a wise man he surrenders at discretion, puts a philosophic face on it, and plans more artistic work while in confinement. If he is a hothead, he puts up a fight and gets it in the neck.
But he never whines for recompense for the nefarious trouble he has gone to.
Germany has not yet learned her lesson. She has burglariously and treacherously broken into her neighbors’ houses and seized them and their contents.
The cost to herself, in life, money—and, more than all, in the estimation of the world at large—is as yet hidden from her. When the bill is presented and her bloodshot eyes are opened to it, it will astound her.
For—somehow or other—it will have to be paid—to the last farthing. And while she is in confinement for her diabolical misdeeds, the world, it is to be fervently hoped, will see to it that all further power for mischief will be taken from her forever.
This burglar has intrenched himself among his plunder. He would negotiate with the besieging police to be allowed to keep something at all events for all his trouble.
He shall. He shall keep what he has earned—the loathing and contempt of every honest man under the sun.
JOHN OXENHAM.