The romance of war faded.  Unquiet sensations were produced by the stories that there was nothing to do but go home, and they would soon be placed aboard the transports and homeward bound.  Besides, the climate was depressing.  The days were hot and the nights were not refreshing.  The rations were better and there were dry places to sleep, but there was no inspiring excitement, and it was not a life worth living.  War—­“the front”—­instead of offering incomparable varieties, became tedious—­it was a bore, in fact.  How could a crowded city and thronged streets be attractive in a military sense, or the scene of patriotic sacrifice, when the most arduous duty was that of police?  Was it for this they had left homes in Oregon, Montana, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Nebraska, Utah, California and Colorado?

There came an episode of homesickness.  It was about time in a soldier’s life to contrast it with the farms and the villages, the shops, mines and manufactories.  They were kept busy on guard and in caring for themselves, in activities as the masters of a strange community, but the novelties of the tropics lost their flavor.  What did a man want with oranges when there were apples?  What was a rice swamp compared with a corn field?  Think of the immeasurable superiority, as a steady thing, of an Irish potato to a banana, or a peach to a pineapple!  What was a Chinese pony alongside a Kentucky horse, or a water buffalo with the belly of a hippopotamus and horns crooked as a saber and long as your arm to one who had seen old-fashioned cows, and bulls whose bellowing was as the roaring of lions?  The miserable but mighty buffaloes were slower than oxen and, horns and all, tame as sheep—­the slaves of serfs!

As for the Chinese, if there were no other objection, they should be condemned because too numerous—­faithful, perhaps, in a way, but appearing with too much frequency in the swarming streets.  And the women, with hair hanging down their backs, one shoulder only sticking out of their dresses, the skin shining like a scoured copper kettle; a skirt tight around the hips and divided to show a petticoat of another tint, a jacket offering further contrasts in colors, slippers flapping under naked heels, faces solemn as masks of death heads—­oh, for the rosy and jolly girls we left behind us in tears!  How beautiful were the dear golden-haired and blue-eyed blondes of other days!  The boys wanted at least tobacco and aerated waters to soothe themselves with, and if there was not to be any more fighting, what was the matter with going home?

They also serve, however, who only stand and wait—­there are no soldiers or sailors in the world who are in a position of greater interest and usefulness than those of the American army and navy who hold fast with arms the capital city of the Philippines.  The army, though much exposed, has not suffered severely from sickness.  There has been an intense and protracted strain upon the men of the ships, but they