of Continuing War." This optimism streamed out from Washington on the 11th, and on that date also brigadier Otis (not the commanding general) returned home and made his report. This is what it had cost to capture Malolos:

Thus, after an arduous and brilliant campaign by the Second Division, supported by other troops, lasting seven days and involving frequent combats, numerous casualties among our troops, and heavy losses by the enemy, Malolos, the recent capital of the so-called Filipino revolutionary government, fell before the American arms. Does this look as though the 'rebels' were weak, seven days of constant arduous fighting to capture one important place? Of course the 'enemy's losses were heavy,' but what about ours?

It is my grievous task to have to report that the casualties of the brigade during the seven days' operations particularly described in this report aggregate 136 in killed and wounded, thus swelling the brigade's total casualties in battle since the outbreak of the rebellion to 285, or considerably more than 10 per cent. of the average effective strength of the command actually engaged in the campaign from first to last.

This was only those lost from his brigade, not from the whole Division engaged in this 'brilliant' campaign.

Still things went on as before and the sorry enemy continued about to be crushed, according to Washington and creeper Otis. "Last Act in the Drama," came from headquarters, "The curtain will go down in a few days on the fighting in the Island of Luzon." Then came other information, very suggestive of the condition of some things beside bullocks:

The roads are rough and after the daily showers, which are forerunners of the rainy season, so soft that it is impossible to make more than a mile an hour. The few mules that are here have been found to be really superior to bullocks for this work. The latter die unless they are given frequent baths, and the heat has killed so many that carting is now all done by night.

A letter was published from Brig.-Gen. Hale wherein he described the leaders of the rebellion as a scurvy lot, impelled to fight by the enjoyment ‘of living in fine houses belonging to others,' and thought that the insurgent cause would soon 'fall to pieces of its own weight' if

this could be stopped and a few other luxuries like it"especially if some inducement is offered to the troops to surrender and turn in their arms." Brave briber Hale! Why were you not on hand to finish up the American war of independence by putting Washington and his staff out of the other people's fine houses they quartered in and giving the American farmers some especial inducement to lay down their arms? You who were fighting out there to destroy freedom never had a vision what it is for a much beset people to fight for freedom, did you.

Dewey himself at last spoke out oraculously: “End Not Far Off." Aguinaldo and his generals must be captured, and then the very semblance of an insurrection will cease." Why yes; that is crack military soothsaying, exactly what might have been said to Napoleon III at Sedan: "Moltke and his generals must be captured, and then the very semblance of an invasion will cease.' The Tagalos are the trouble, says Dewey, "the end is not far off if we push after them;" all very pretty, Cousin George, but what if it will take a hundred thousand Americans to push, and not catch them?

But far back on May 4 a specky cloud of another hue began to carol over Washington. The "government" was getting ready its next move. It sent out cards to the people:

"The War Department is satisfied from the dispatches received from Gen. Otis to-day that the American commander has put aside the insurgent temporizing over peace, and has turned his attention to most aggressive tactics. The wisdom of this course was fully approved by officials here, who have foreseen that the natives needed further chastisement in order to bring them to a realizing sense of their position" [i. e. a realizing sense that they are well in hand.] They are not whipped yet then, and now you begin to tell us what you knew from the beginning that they are not by a long degree easy to whip.

Finally, at the end of May, came the collapse of all this imposing flimflam. Then it was announced that the ‘rebellion' was not crushed or anything like crushed, and

that a very much larger force would be necessary. The Imperialist Administration press changed its festive toot in the twinkling of an eye and began to send out headlines in this key: "More Troops. Need of Additional Men in the Philippines." "Crush Them. Something

Must Be Done to the Filipinos. [!] A Provisional Army Will Be Raised if Necessary. Volunteers not to Be Enlisted Except as a Last Resort. Regular Army May Suffice. Thirty Thousand Men Needed to Subdue the Rebels. That Number Will Be Given Gen. Otis if He Wants Them. Forty Thousand Men Available if Deemed Necessary."

What does this mean? We thought the amiable 'traitors' were 'busted' last March, and now it is June and the work isn't begun. Is Otis a McClellan? Didn't he want, or wasn't he able, to crush the skinny followers of that 'self-seeking' Aguinaldo who was only carrying on the war that he might live in other people's good houses? Hadn't we better send another general to draw Otis's salary-Eagan, Corbin, or even the infinitessimal Alger himself? But perhaps McKinley is the dallying McClellan. How if he only sought to drag the contest painfully along to work the American people up by slow stages to a spirit of revenge against the Filipinos for loving their freedom so well, and being so brave, and standing so intrepidly in front of his beneficently assimilating thuds of extermination, and worrying the sublime Sultan of America in his imperial stagger across the world. It has a very strong flavor of fretting Americans up to the military imperialist pitch by irritation. Whether the war is righteous or nefariously hellish, if it can dawdle and drag on, killing our men and decimating our regiments, the people will at last blurt out Crush them! Crush them!-Crucify them, crucify them!

If this was the game, it has worked. The censored dispatches from McClellan Otis were first allowed to moderate their twaddle as follows:

Dispatches from Manila stating that more troops are needed and that the American army is suffering embarrassment and unnecessary losses on account of the lack of a sufficient force to occupy the territory from which the insurgents are driven, attract much attention here. It is assumed that the facts are as stated, and moreover that Gen. Otis has his reason for wanting them to become known. Dispatches from Manila are censored, and if Gen. Otis had disapproved of this representation of the situation, as respects his forces, it could not have been transmitted. The same is true of dispatches concerning dissatisfaction in military circles at Manila with the course of the civilian members of the peace commission.*

This is solid extract of beef reading, neither canned nor chemicaled, for free republican gastritists, self-rulers supposed to suppose that they know about their own affairs and control them. Censored dispatches, Otis sitting in his other people's fine houses in Manila distilling from his squatty imagination what he thinks (under general mandate from his Sultan) the American bulk had better believe about 'their' campaign of mercy on his beat

The next act of these thrilling private theatricals passes in Washington. Alger, Corbin and Smith (that chicken Emory of mail-suppression immortality, our postmastergeneral) held a cabinet meeting and McKinley was there to transmit the orders of Alger and Corbin to the country. The country was informed by telegraph of this pompy conference:

The situation in the Philippines was reviewed thoroughly, and the subject was discussed from every standpoint. It was agreed that something should be done to crush the rebellion speedily, and, if that could be accomplished in no other way than by raising a provisional army, this expedient would be resorted to.

Then came the crash and din from the Chorus for which all this stage scenery had been prepared, reverberating the edict, Crush them, Crucify them. We select the word of God's particular men, the clergy, because if God said this the Filipinos must surely die. He chose Kain (or Cain) for his messenger this time, by earthly title archbishop, who smote the rock of St. Louis with these thunders, and tears of patriotism and hate for Canaanites and Jebusites and Amalekites who own the land that we want flowed out:

9

*Special in daily paper, from Washington, May 28, 1899.

'The United States should at once proceed to deal with the Philippine question with a firm hand. I was not in favor of the war, but since we have raised our flag over the Philippine Islands, we should make the authority of the United States supreme there, even if it becomes necessary to send 200,000 troops there to do it. All Christian nations look to us to accomplish that end. We cannot go backward. We must not shirk the task we have undertaken. It is impossible that we should abandon the islands now that we have taken hold of them. From the view point of national honor, I say that the administration should take hold of this question now with a firm hand, and not desist until the rebellion is put down. If we were to relinquish the Philippines to their fate, England, Germany, Russia, or some other nation would step in the very next day and assert their right to restore order there, and to protect human life and property.'*

4. Worrying Destiny into the American People.

The administration has again gained its point. The worry of the long drawnout war of which Americans are sick and ashamed has made them passive to further 'destiny,' delivered through Mack; although opposed to the president's spit-in-the-Filipino-face policy in the beginning, they are now frictioned up to imagining that this huge Republic's honor can only be saved by putting the copper heel of might and light on the valiant natives and mashing light out of them; the illogical, ignorant, arrant gabble of archbishop Cain 'goes down.' All Christian nations look to us for a power of killing, now that we realize our Christian mission in the world; we do not deny that part of Cain's heavenly message. Ever since the emperor Constantine used Christianity as a ladder to power Christian nations have been at it in that sense, conquering

*This divine proclamation was delivered on June 6, 1899.