kinson. The elderly party was going home on his usual evening train, and was deep in the delights of his newspaper when Mr. Atkinson brushed in and, all aglow with enthusiasm, said, as he offered. his hand a little effusively to the man behind the paper, "Ah, good evening, Mr. B—, I'm delighted to see you, delighted. Have you seen my last pamphlet?" Evidently the interruption was not the most welcome thing in the world at just that place in the daily love story, for, as he took his visitor's hand, the old gentleman said, forcibly and with much emphasis, "Good God, I hope so!" I have never heard of what was said after that.

CHAPTER VII

ATKINSON'S GHASTLY DEATH

STATISTICS

DISEASES IN OUR ARMY IN THE PHILIPPINES

It would not be surprising if a man who will spend days in tabulating such financial statements as we have just examined could, if he cannot carry his point in any other way, see nothing wrong in frightening every mother in the country who had a boy out there in the Philippines. For each of those boys we sent out there was somebody's boy,-the pride of some gray-haired woman whose sight was growing dim with the years and the tears while she waited and watched for him to come back. Remember that,—that each soldier is somebody's boy, and remember it while we are considering what is to follow.

I desire to show you the picture Mr. Atkinson painted and thrust up into the faces of those in the homes of these boys who went to the Philippines.

We who remember those saints we called " Mother," and can now see them in no other way, can realize what an awful thing such statements as these would have been to her if her boy had been going out there. We know that such a picture as Mr. Atkinson paints here would never leave your mother or mine, night or day, till her boy came back,—not for an instant would that picture leave her, it would lurk in the depths of every cup and sicken her as it leered out of every mirror.

On p. 9, of the Anti-Imperialist, No. 2, Mr. Atkinson says:

There is no estimate of the necessary expense of raising every year a new force equal to about onethird of the entire force required in order to fill the annual gaps which will be caused by death and disease (by service in the Philippines). By a comparison of all the data, it becomes apparent that about one-third of the white troops stationed in tropical climates must be replaced year by year by fresh levies to make up for death or disability."

On p. 10 of the same pamphlet, he says further:

"There is no sign or hint of any pension being granted to the survivors of the Spanish war or for the support of the twenty per cent. at least, of all the troops sent out each year to the tropics who will be brought back wholly or partly disabled."

On p. 22, same book:

"Only a part of the horrors of military control in tropical climates have been yet exposed... In 1895 France took possession of Madagascar. The following extracts from an official report will surely indicate the probable results of our present campaign in the Philippine Islands, which are much nearer the equator, and where our forces must, of necessity, be confined to the most dangerous section of the malarious and pestilential coast stations. Amongst the military troops the general mortality was 356 per 1000. The body which was the most severely afflicted was that of the military engineers which worked on the construction of the roads and bridges; two-thirds of them died. Then comes with a proportion of 623 per 1000, the 40th battalion of chasseurs à pied,' which was worn out by its forced march on Tsarasota, and of which not one man reached Tananarive. It was not a

question of sickness, but of death; the general average of deaths for the military troops reached nearly 40 per 100, while in some bodies of troops it was over 60 per 100."

Now let us go to Anti-Imperialist No. 4 on p. 5:

"It appears that the executive officers of the government are now afraid to have the ghastly facts of the conditions in Manila become known to the public at home, lest men should be prevented from enlisting; or, what is practically the true term, be warned against committing gradual suicide by military service in the tropics.'

Now let us look at No. 6, p. 15:

"The weakened and disabled volunteers and regulars returned from Manila will be scattered about the country or in hospitals recovering from the ghastly conditions of two years' service in the malarial swamps of the Philippines, many thousand of the original number having been killed in battle or having died from disease."

Now I want to go back to No. 2, p. 23:

"By the rule of proportion, without making any allowance for the hotter and more pestilential conditions of the Philippine Islands, the death-rate in our forces in the Philippines will be one-third; probably a greater number will be sent home invalided,

(that is, two-thirds dead and sent home). Many self-sacrificing men might enlist on the certainty of death or disability within two years, but will, of course, be married before leaving for Manila, in order to be assured of adequate pensions for their widows and children."

On

p. 44, same number, are these statements that cap them all:

66

Will not the mothers of the land regret the loss of their sons, now on the way to or now in Manila, only beginning to be exposed to worse dangers than resistance of the Filipinos under the ghastly conditions of the worst of tropical climates in the rainy season? In an aggressive campaign away from the sea we may fear that of the 25,000 men who have