er army out there to be victorious some more. The way it is now, we
shall not have troops enough there to bury the dead. The boys have
been debating at school the Philippine question, and it was decided
unanimously that the President is up against a tough proposition, and
if he does not stop looking at the political side of that war and send
troops enough to eat up those shirtless soldiers, who can live on six
grains of rice and two grains of quinine a day, we are going to be
whipped out of our boots. That's what us boys think."

"Well, you boys don't want to think too much, or you are liable to have
brain fever," said the old man, as he realized that there was mutiny
brewing among the school children. "What you fellows want the President
to do? Haven't we whipped the negroes everywhere, and taken village
after village, and burned them, and--and--chased them--and----"

"Sure!" said the boy, as he saw that his uncle was at a loss to defend
the policy of his government. "We have had regular foot races with them,
and burned the huts of the helpless, and taken villages, and then didn't
have troops to hold them, and when we went out of a village on one
street, the niggers came in on another, and shot into our pants. We swim
rivers and take towns with as brave work as ever was done, and become so
exhausted we have to lay down in the mud and have a fit, and the niggers
climb trees like monkeys, eat cocoanuts and chatter at us. Say, Uncle
Ike, do you know us boys are getting tired of this business, and we are
getting up a petition to the President to get a trained nurse to put
Alger to sleep and run the war department herself."

[Illustration: We are going to have the petition 071]

"We are going to have the petition signed by seven million American boys.
Why, if those niggers could go off in the woods and shoot at a mark for
a week, and get so they could hit anything, our boys would all be dead
in a month. The trouble is the niggers just pull up a gun and touch it
off like a girl does a firecracker. She lights the tip end of the tail
of a firecracker, and throws it, and you forget all about it, and when
her firecracker has ceased to interest you, and you don't know where
it is, it goes off in your coat collar, or down the waistband of your
pants. A Filipino shoots the way a trained monkey touches off a syphon
of seltzer water. He knows it will squirt if he touches the thumbpiece,
but it is as liable to hit him in the face, o