I am reminded of this epistle from a Christian child--who, doubtless, goes to Sunday school, and could recite the Ten Commandments--by a letter addressed to General Kuroki’s Army from Harada Ishi, a twelve-year-old girl, who attends school at Yotsuya, in Japan. “One day I was taking a walk with my sister. Before the gate of a certain house stood a very little girl--very nice looking. She had with her a little dog, very pretty, and said to it:--‘Tama, when the war is over, my father will bring back a Russian’s head and give it to you. So you must be a good dog.’ When I looked up at the gate there was a plate with the name Lieut.-Colonel Katsuda.” Thus the daughter, not of Herodias, but of a gallant soldier in the Twentieth Century! General Kuroki received many letters from juvenile admirers in all parts of the world. Most of them seem to think that he understands English and keeps an unlimited supply of photographs and foreign postage stamps. Like Lord Roberts, he insists on an answer to all these communications. Perhaps I ought not to have made known this weakness. Lest he should suffer from my indiscretion, let me hasten to add that the General is thinking of some automatic and mechanical device that will give him time to attend strictly to the business of war. The teachers in Japan hit upon an ingenious plan for diverting the stream of missives into a wider channel. They invited their scholars to send letters and drawings to the soldiers at the front. With the aid of an interpreter, I have looked over a batch of this juvenile correspondence. Some of the drawings are excellent, and show originality as well as artistic ability. They might astonish a drill-sergeant and make an artilleryman forget to load his gun; but even then the Russians would have the worst of it, for in the pictures, as in the field, one Japanese is a match for three “Ruskies,” and a broom serves to empty Liao-yang and Port Arthur of the enemies of Nippon. About the letters it would be as hard to generalise as it would be about the speeches of British members of Parliament when a General Election is approaching. One thing only is certain. The girls are better letter-writers than the boys, and a Japanese letter looks infinitely more artistic than the most finished Italian hand. Some of these epistles might be framed and hung upon the walls of our drawing-rooms at home, in order to show how the characters which Japan has inherited from China live and breathe, and have form. Their contents are as varied as children’s faces. Here is a letter from a boy in the Higher Grade School at Aoyama. Sato Shoichiro evidently knows something of the origin of the War, for he writes:--