Loot! Poem by Jessie Pope

When Blucher helped us make an end
Of Bonaparte, the common foe,
He came to England as a friend,
About a hundred years ago.
The sight of London fired his breast,
He gazed with eagerness and wonder,
And, brimming with Teutonic zest,
He cried, 'Oh, what a town to plunder! '

Der Tag, however, was not yet.
A century has passed away.
Blucher has settled Nature's debt,
But his example lives to-day
And kindles in the German mind
An altar that there's no uprooting,
Where love of power is enshrined,
Together with a love of looting.

They spoil and pillage, smash and swill ;
And helpless cities they have racked
Must, willy nilly, pay the bill
For the delight of being sacked,
That motto 'Blood and Iron' is done ;
A newer one must be enscrolled ;
The carte de visite of the Hun
Should now be printed, ' Blood and Gold.'