It took G.K. Chesterton to discover, in Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, this lethal vignette of a World War One profiteer:

The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.

In World War Two, the pot-bellied profiteers of the cartoonists shared a crowded roll of dishonour with a multitude of thieves, chisellers, racketeers and spivs, whose activities are mercilessly set out in An Underworld at War.

LRB 4 December 2003 | PDF Download