"I'm sorry for that," said Sam. "It would be pleasanter to be called 'General.'"
"It's all the same," said Cleary. "Wasn't Napoleon called the Little Corporal? It's really more distinguished."
"Perhaps it is," said Sam contentedly.
"Some of the papers criticize us a little too," added Cleary. "They say we are acting brutally here and in the Cubapines. Of course only a few say it, but their number is increasing."
"They make themselves ridiculous," said Sam. "They don't see how ludicrous their suggestions are that we should actually retire and let these countries relapse into barbarism. As that fellow said at Havilla, they have no sense of humor."
"And yet," retorted Cleary, "our greatest humorists, Mark Swain, Mr. Tooley, and the best cartoonists, and our only really humorous paper, Knife, are on that side."
"But they are only humorists," cried Sam, "mere professional jokers. You can't expect serious sense from them. They are mere buffoons. The serious people here, such as Dr. Amen, are with us to a man."
"I saw old Amen get caught the other day," said Cleary. "I was interviewing the colonel of the 15th, and in came Amen and began talking about the Porsslanese—what barbarians they were, no religion, no belief, no faith. Why, the idea of self-sacrifice was utterly unknown to them! Just then in came a young officer and said, 'Colonel, the son of that old native we're going to shoot this afternoon for looting, is bothering us and says he wants to be shot instead of his father. What shall we do with him?' Amen said good-day and cleared out. By the way, the colonel of the 15th is in a hole just now. He was shut up in the legations, you know, and all the women there were down on him because he wouldn't make the sentries salute them when the men were dead tired with watching. They are charging him with cowardice. There'll never be an end of this backbiting. It's almost as sickening as the throat-cutting and stabbing. I confess I'm getting sick of it all. When you see a private shoot an old native for not blacking his boots, when the poor fellow was trying to understand him and couldn't, and smiling as best he could, it's rather tough; and I've seen twenty babies if I've seen one lying in the streets with a bayonet hole in them. They have executions every day in one camp or another. I saw one coolie, who had been working fourteen hours at a stretch loading carts, shot down because he hadn't the strength to go on."
"I'm afraid the heat is telling on you, Cleary," said Sam. "This is all sickly sentimentality. War is war. The trouble with you is that there has been no regular campaign on to occupy your attention. This lying about doing nothing is a bad thing for everybody. Wait till the Tutonian Emperor comes out and we'll have something to do."
"He won't find any enemy to fight," said Cleary.