The other night, five of the soldiers, mere boys, donned citizens'
dress and went out for a lark. At roll-call they were missing and a
guard was sent to search for them. When found, they resisted arrest
and three minutes after they all answered the roll-call in another
world.

And yet although the discipline is so severe, the men seem a contented
and happy lot. They stroll along the roads when off duty hand in hand
like school girls, and laugh and chatter as if life were a big
holiday. But when the time comes to go to the front, they don their
gay little uniforms, and march just as joyfully away to give the last
drop of their blood for their Emperor.

I tell you, Mate, I want to get out in the street and cheer every
regiment that passes! No drum, no fife, no inspiring music to stir
their blood and strengthen their courage, nothing but the unvarying
monotony of the four note trumpets. They don't need music to make them
go. They are perfect little machines whose motive power is a
patriotism so absolute, so complete, that it makes death on the
battle-field an honor worthy of deification.

I look out into the play-ground, and every boy down to the smallest
baby in the kindergarten is armed with a bamboo gun. Such drilling and
marching, and attacking of forts you have never seen. That the enemy
is nothing more than sticks stuck at all angles matters little. An
enemy there must be, and the worst boy in Japan would die before he
would even _play_ at being a Russian! If Kuropatkin could see
just one of these awful onslaughts, he would run up the white flag and
hie himself to safety. So you see we are well guarded and with quiet