Merilee Shaw assumed the posture of an attentive schoolgirl, standing erect, her hands locked in his. "Please continue, Sergeant. I want to hear everything."

"Tonight you said this is a war of subjugation, illegal in the eyes of God and the law. You said it was founded on greed, and our government uses the military for profit, not peace. All this may be true, but the reason this war is so bloody, Miss Shaw, is because it's a race war. The United States is taking over the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam because these are all nations of colored people. Their native populations aren't white, and in the eyes of our government, not fully human. They're 'half-devil and half-child.' It's the God given duty, the burden of the white man to oversee the lives of the inferior races."

"I'm aware of that horrible sentiment Sergeant, but I assure you, no thinking person subscribes to it."

"Miss Shaw, you've heard the words nigger and coon and sambo, but have you ever heard dink, gook, slope, bullet-head or gugu? These are some of the names white soldiers call Filipinos, and there's a lot more a lot worse. Where do these names come from? Why do they exist at all? Because without a moral purpose, most soldiers don't have the stomach to brutalize and murder a people, they need to dehumanize them first. If they make themselves believe the enemy is less than human, then it's natural to spit at him, run him down in the streets and kill his children.

"No atrocity's too great here because we've made the Filipino a beast, not a man. This is what it's come to in this war. It's open season on an entire population of dark-skinned people. This is what your Colonel Bloody Shirt tried to tell you when he said there's no law in these islands. Here, if a white man murders a Filipino, he's the envy of his platoon. If he murders enough of them, he gets a medal. The U.S. Army's training a generation of young men to run roughshod over a nation of colored people.

"All these soldiers will go home someday. How much of what they've been taught here will go with them? What will they teach their children about the value of a colored man's life? The Filipinos tell the Negro if we kill them, we bring down our own race back home. If that turns out to be true, then there's far more at stake than spending-money for a few back-east shirt makers. Take that story home with you Miss Shaw."