276 LINES IN PLEASANT PLACES 



some of the cannon for Waterloo were cast in its 

 immediate neighbourhood. 



This chapter would have ended with the previous 

 paragraph but for a scrap of characteristic news in the 

 Daily Chronicle. Many of the reports of brutalities 

 and wanton outrage in war time should be received with 

 distrust, but Mr. Naylor, who telegraphed this story 

 from Paris was an old journalistic comrade whom many 

 a special-correspondent expedition enables me to know 

 as thoroughly reliable. He wrote : 



" At Montdidier there is a great organisation which 

 has for its object the breeding of the best kinds of fish 

 with which to stock French rivers and lakes. As soon 

 as the Germans came to Montdidier they proceeded to 

 blow up the banks of the fish-breeding ponds with 

 dynamite, and cover the streams with petroleum in order 

 to kill all the fish in them. They succeeded in destroy- 

 ing millions of immature trout and other fish, and 

 ruining completely a remunerative and useful industry. 

 The same spirit which drives such barbarians to blow 

 up a fish-breeding pond impels them to drop bombs on 

 open towns, which do no harm whatever to those who 

 are fighting against them, but only kill inoffensive women 

 and children." 



There are many good German anglers ; the world of 

 angling and fish culture owes much to their scientists. 

 But I think there must have been a " wrong 'un " at 

 Montdidier. That pouring of petroleum of malice afore- 

 thought into the water must have been the " culture " 

 of one who knew precisely what he was doing. And the 

 moral is this : The cause that transforms a disciple of 

 Izaak Walton into a fiend must assuredly be accursed. 



Print* in Great Britain 67 HtatU, Walton 6- KIMV, Ld., London and AyUtbvry. 

 for Simpkin, Mankall, Hamtllon, Kent 6- Co.. Ltd. 



