uldn't be thirty cents' worth of movable property there in a week, and
they'd levy fines of millions of francs a day. Their military scheme and
teaching and open purpose is to make somebody pay for their vast
military outlay of the last forty years. They must do that or go
bankrupt. Now it looks as if they would go bankrupt. But in a little
while they may be able to bombard New York and demand billions of
dollars to refrain from destroying the city. That's the richest place
left to spoil.

"Now they say that--quite openly and quite frankly. Now if we keep
'neutral' to a highwayman--what do we get for our pains? That's the
mistake we are making. If we had sent Bernstorff home the day after the
_Lusitania_ was sunk and recalled Gerard and begun to train an army we'd
have had no more trouble with them. But since they have found out that
they can keep us discussing things forever and a day, they will keep us
discussing things till they are ready. We are very simple; and we'll get
shot for it yet....

"The prestige and fear of the United States has gone down, down,
down-disappeared; and we are regarded as 'discussors,' incapable of
action, scared to death of war. That's all the invitation that robbers,
whose chief business is war, want--all the invitation they need. These
devils are out for robbery--and you don't seem to believe it in the
United States: that's the queer thing. This neutrality business makes us
an easy mark. As soon as they took a town in Belgium, they asked for all
the money in the town, all the food, all the movable property; and
they've levied a tax every month since on every town and made the town
government borrow the money to pay it. If a child in a town makes a
disrespectful remark, they fine the town an extra $1,000. They haven't
got enough so far to keep them going flush; and they won't unless they
get Paris--which they can't do now. If they got London, they'd be rich;
they wouldn't leave a shilling and they'd make all the rich English get
all the money they own abroad. This is the reason that Frenchmen and
Englishmen prefer to be killed by the 100,000. In the country over which
their army has passed a crow would die of starvation and no human being
has ten cents of real money. The Belgian Commission is spending more
than 100 million dollars a year to keep the Belgians alive--only because
they are robbed every day. They have a rich country and could support
themselves but for these robbers. That's t