“It’s been nearly five years since I first visited our little Japanese brothers. They’re a curious lot, but, Bill, there ain’t nothing soft about ’em.”
Boatswain’s Mate John O’Neil glanced as he spoke at his companion, Seaman Bill Marley, both from the “Alaska.”
“In that war with the Ruskis they were right up to snuff,” he continued, as they strolled along aimlessly. “They saw their work and they went for it, and stayed on the job until it was finished.”
The two man-of-war’s men had come to Tokyo on the special train for a forty-eight hours’ liberty in that Eastern capital, and were enjoying themselves thoroughly. Everywhere they met welcoming smiles, and even the little urchins playing in the streets stopped, and raising their tiny hands aloft, cried “Banzai” as they passed.
The day was balmy; the air laden with perfume of many flowers. In the shops they had seen many beautiful things and had spent a portion of their slender pocket money on such articles as took their fancy, marveling the while upon the smallness of the price.
“Say, Jack, look here; all this war talk is soap-suds, ain’t it?” Bill Marley asked.
O’Neil contemplated the back of a man a half a block or so farther up the street before replying.
“He’s in a big hurry about something,” he muttered half aloud, and Bill Marley asked, “What’s that?” for he had heard O’Neil speak, and thought it might be an answer to his question.
“Oh, about this war talk,” O’Neil responded, his mind reverting from the stranger ahead, whom he made out to be a European in a big hurry to get somewhere. “I don’t take no stock in it. There ain’t nothing that I can see we’ve got to fight for, unless it’s just to see who’s the best man. This war business cost too many people too much money. These Japs are nice little fellows; they like us and they want to show us they like us. They are mighty proud of their knowledge of fighting, too, and they’ve got a code of honor they call ‘Bushido,’[1] or something like it, which means, as far as I can find out, ‘If any one insults you, and you can’t lick him, cut yourself open with a sharp knife.’ Now fellows with ideas like that ain’t to be monkeyed with. If we treat ’em square and be careful about treading on this ‘Bushy porcupine,’ they’ll continue to yell ‘banzai’ at us, but if we get funny and put it over them in some way, they’re apt to tackle even us.”
“And if we lick them,” Bill Marley asked, “then I suppose they’ll take to the tall timbers and disembowel themselves?”