That's the thing to make the boys git up and shoot!
It's the same with dogs and men,
If you'd make 'em come again
Clap 'em forward with a
Loo-loo-lulu
Loot!
Against our soldiers, on the other hand, a great many of whom were very poor, there had not been a single accusation of looting. In the post-office, for instance, they ordered one of the captured British officers to guard the safe. In the streets where windows had been broken, they tried to keep the people from pillaging the shops. Whatever money our men found lying loose in the buildings they occupied was turned over to their superior officers. Again and again I myself had seen men of the Citizen Army, quite as poor as any British soldier, hand over money to Commandant Mallin. Had I only thought of it, I could have taken this with me when I was carried to the hospital. The cause would have been at least one hundred pounds richer.
At the College of Surgeons we had destroyed nothing except a portrait of Queen Victoria. We took that down and made puttees out of it. We did not feel we were doing any wrong, for it was Queen Victoria who, in 1848, wrote to her uncle, King Leopold of Belgium:
"There are ample means of crushing the rebellion in Ireland, and I think it very likely to go off without any contest, which people (I think rightly) rather regret. The Irish should receive a good lesson or they will begin it again."
From this quotation any one can see that the Queen looked upon the Irish as aliens, which, indeed, they are.