d, "Oh, well, they'll learn. It
will be a good lesson for them." Instead of telling them, or telling
their captains, he thinks it best that they should find things out by
suffering. I cannot decide whether to write anything about it or not.
I cannot see where it could do any good, for it is the system that is
wrong--the whole volunteer system, I mean. Captain Lee happened to be
in Washington when the first Manila outfit was starting from San
Francisco, and it was on his representations that they gave the men
hammocks, and took a store of Mexican dollars. They did not know that
Mexican dollars are the only currency of the East, and were expecting
to pay the men in drafts on New York.

Isn't that a pitiable situation when a captain of an English company
happens to stray into the war office, and happens to have a good heart
and busies himself to see that our own men are supplied with hammocks
and spending money. None of our officers had ever seen khaki until
they saw Lee's, nor a cork helmet until they saw mine and his; now,
naturally, they won't have anything else, and there is not another one
in the country. The helmets our troops wear would be smashed in one
tropical storm, and they are so light that the sun beats through them.
They are also a glaring white, and are cheap and nasty and made of
pasteboard. The felt hats are just as bad; the brim is not broad
enough to protect them from the sun or to keep the rain off their
necks, and they are made of such cheap cotton stuff that they grow hard
when they are wet and heavy, instead of shedding the rain as good felt
would do. They have always urged that our uniforms, though not smart
nor "for show," were for use. The truth is, as they all admit, that
for the tropics they are worse than useless, and that in any climate
they are cheap and poor.

I could go on for pages, but it has to be written later; now they would
only think it was an attack on the army. But it is sickening to see
men being sacrificed as these men will be. This is the worst season of
all in the Philippines. The season of typhoons and rainstorms and
hurricanes, and they would have sent the men off without anything to
sleep on but the wet ground and a wet blanket. It has been a great
lesson for me, and I have rubber tents, rubber blankets, rubber coats
and hammocks enough for an army corps. I have written nothing for the
paper, because, if I started to tell the truth at all, it would do no
go