If the patriotic citizen has been an “old soldier,” or is familiar with the history of wars, he will also know that, if the whole land fighting of that Spanish American war was corralled into _one_ action that action would be infinitely less sanguine than was the action at a number of “skirmishes” in our civil war--that, if the several naval actions of that war were merged into one, it would not equal, in either gore or naval glory, Farragut’s capture of Mobile, the action in Hampton Roads, nor even Perry’s scrimmage on Lake Erie in 1813. What has all this to do with the postal department deficit, some one may ask? It has just this to do with it: If a people stand unmurmuringly for the expenditure of _billions_ for a service that yields them no return, save a protection _they have not needed_ and of doubtful security if needed, that people is not going to raise any noisy hubbub over a dinky deficit of a few millions a year for a service which should serve them _every day of every year_. I have expanded a little, not disgressed, in writing to my statement numbered 3. I will now proceed with my premeditated statements. Some of them may be a little frigid, but none of them are cold-storage. Some one may have told it all to you before, but that is his fault, not mine. He merely beat me to the _facts_. 4. As stated in a forward page of this volume, the people of this nation want and demand _service_ of its Postoffice Department. They care not to the extent of a halloween pea-shooter whether the service is rendered at a deficit of six million or at a surplus of ten million, _if service is rendered for the money expended_. 5. The people of this country will object more strenuously against a _surplus_ in their postal revenues--their service tax--than they ever have or will object to a deficit in the revenues of that service, _if they get the service_. 6. The Postoffice Department is not understood--is not even thought of by intelligent citizens--as a _revenue-producing_ department. It _is_ understood to be a _service_ department, and the citizen--His Majesty, the American Citizen--is always willing to pay for services rendered. 7. The Postoffice Department has not in the period named--no, not for thirty or thirty-five years--_rendered the citizen the service for which he paid_. I mean by that, of course, that the citizen has been compelled to pay far more for a postal service than he _should have paid for that service_. 8. Had that service been _honestly, faithfully and efficiently rendered_, the price the citizen has paid for it _would have left no deficit for any year within the past thirty_. 9. _The only deficits in those thirty or thirty-five years have been the result of manipulated bookkeeping, of political trenching into the revenues of the department, of loose methods in its management, of disinterest in the enforcement of even loose methods, and of downright lootage and stealings._ “Rather harsh that, is it not?” asks one.