r friend, Amos. I can coach him, and give him a pretty fair idea
of what war is like."

"There's some talk of schools being inaugurated for teaching such chaps
as he, should the struggle really come; schools where the most approved
methods of modern warfare will be demonstrated by our regularly
qualified officers."

"Schools be damned, sir," the Colonel thundered. "What school, what
infant West Pointer, is qualified better than I, who fought my weight in
wildcats four successive years!--or you, sir, who I've no doubt fought
well, too, although under the banner of a----"

"Truce, truce!" Mr. Strong cried, this time laughing till tears of
pleasure ran down his cheeks. "At Shiloh, Roger, you knew how to honor a
truce, for I carried the flag to you myself--and you weren't old enough
to raise a mustache, either!"

"So you did, Amos; so you did--and, by gad, your cheeks were as smooth
as a girl's, too!" the Colonel's voice dropped to the softness of
reminiscence, growing harsh again as he added: "If I temporarily forget
the rules of honorable warfare, it's because my memory has been
corrupted by the vileness of those Outcasts who, in their ego-mania,
blaspheme the Almighty God by claiming kinship with Him. I wish you and
I could go over there and clean up that pestilential Prussian herd! By
gad, sir, they've the hoof and mouth disease, each confounded one of
them! Whenever I think of them I get rush of blood to the head!"

"And rush of words to the tongue, Roger," the editor added, good
naturedly. "But, my friend, such blasts of hatred are too German to be
acceptable. We're not a nation of small venom!"

"I don't give a cracky whether we are or not! Those rag-tag and bobtail
vermin are calling us names!--and, if I can't fight, by gad, I'll cuss
back!"

"No, you won't, and be part of the big, conquering nation that you are.
Those 'hymns of hate' don't affect England!--neither do the scores of
lewd verses that flow like filth all over Germany! They are merely the
wails of disappointed people, Roger,--the shrieks of a cruelly tricked
national soul! Let them pass!"

"Disappointed people fiddle-sticks!--and I say that it's a tragic
mistake to let anything pass! The most dangerous propaganda waged by
German spies in this country--more alarming in its results thus far than
the blowing up of munition factories, the setting afire of grain
elevators, the enciting of Mexico--has been the honorless skill with
which they have fe