Japanese infants played soldiers; Japanese policemen played soldiers; rickshaw coolies, beneath the contempt of a soldier, dreamed of future incarnations when they should evolve into soldiers; Japanese merchants snuffled, rubbed their damp hands together, and wept internally because the Great Wheel of Fate had not skited them off into the military class, instead of among the low-brows of the shops. And the soldiers themselves--how they strutted and performed in the streets, critically mirroring each other and bowing profoundly, blind to all glory and sorrow not of the soldier, and important as a grist of young doctors just turned loose with their diplomas among the ills of the world.... Aye, funny and pitiful, the young Power looked in its Western pants and guns. What did England think--smiling back at the peace of her Indian borders--of these wee, wet-nosed, scabby-headed Islanders (with their queer little cruet-stands buckled between their kidneys), in full cry with “Banzai Niphon” from cape to cape? What England thought was not what England said, as she reserved the front pages of her daily press for Japanese victories--whether or no. Not exactly an ally in spirit was wise old England, but an ally in letterpress--the veriest Titan of a press-agent.... Funny and pitiable indeed was the ranting, tramping Japanese infantry in the streets of Tokyo--funnier than stage infantry--quite like string-pulled marionettes of _papier maché_; but let the truth be told, the truth that rises clear from the final adjustment of objects in the perspective: The oil of all the chlorates, nitrates, and fulminates filled those queer little kidney-cruets; and these same little Japanese infantrymen proved packages--_papier maché_ packages, if you like--of lyddite, bellite, cordite, romite, hellite, and other boiled-down cyclones. * * * * * On one of those ugly gray afternoons of early February, Benton Day of the _Review_ received a cablegram from his chief in London, Dartmore. There are few men who would express themselves ironically by cable at the London-Tokyo rate of toll. Dartmore did it, and the message follows, with flesh and organs added to the cipher-skeleton: The _Review_ thought you would be interested to know that Japan has declared war and smashed part of the Russian fleet. This news from New York. Kindly inform Tokyo war-office, which I understand is just a step from your hotel.