Excerpts

4. Dinner with Colonel Funston

"You've been in the villages for several days, Doctor Forrester. What news?"

"Not good, I'm afraid, Colonel. The peasants have looted and destroyed Spanish garrisons throughout the region leaving the Spanish soldiers with neither food nor shelter. Their command structure, or what little left of it, is ineffectual. The officers exercise control through brute force only and then only when they think they'll prevail. Spanish soldiers are scattered throughout the barrios sleeping where they can and eating scraps of garbage the peasants throw out for the dogs. It's ugly, sir. There's no attempt at sanitation. I'm worried about disease. We've tried to get them to organize themselves, dig slit trenches, boil their drinking water, but they're just not interested. All they want is to go home. There's nothing more I can do with them, Colonel."

"So it's come full circle," Funston bellowed. "The Filipinos doling out scraps to the Spanish. Now that's irony for you!"

Major Russell ignored the colonel's trenchant remark. He turned to the doctor. "It's the same all over Luzon, doctor. The Spanish government has deliberately slowed down the repatriation of troops. Their economy at home in shambles, there aren't any jobs for eighty thousand returning soldiers, not even any place to put them. The great Spanish empire is bankrupt. I think the government wishes they'd just disappear so they wouldn't have to deal with them."

Lieutenant Alstaetter spoke up, "When I left San Francisco six weeks ago, Congress had not yet appropriated the twenty million they promised Spain in the Treaty of Paris. Perhaps those funds will help the Spanish get their soldiers home." His first words of the evening, and he immediately regretted them. Suddenly, Colonel Funston fixed him with an icy glare. Unthinkable one of his subordinates spoke in defense of the Spanish at his own dinner table! The officers were silent for a long moment.

Finally, Colonel Funston said, "It is our position, Lieutenant, Congress should never have agreed to any condition, save Spain's total and complete surrender. If Spain's broke, that's her problem. Personally, I wouldn't give them one red cent."

Captain Baston drained his glass then poured himself another, "The Spanish should have considered this ignominious eventuality before they began their empire building." His speech becoming slurred, Major Russell made a mental note that Baston liked his brandy, maybe a little too well. He raised his own glass. "Let's hope the lesson is not lost on us, Captain."

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Excerpts:

1. Fagen arrives in the Philippines

2. White soldiers bring their prejudice with them

3. Fagen hears another side of the story

4. Dinner with Colonel Funston

5. Fagen's first taste of combat

6. Fagen meets Clarita

7. More than fair?

8. The water cure

9. Fagen gets his fortune told

10. Imperialism exposed

11. Sergeant Rivers speaks his mind

12. Genocide

13. Fagen meets El Presidente

14. Bad news comes to Fagen

15. Fate takes over

16. San Lazaro leper hospital

17. An offer Fagen can't refuse

18. Funston makes a plan

19. "Capitan" Fagen

20. Funston assembles his team

21. Morality, ethics and war

22. Jungle encounter

23. Commencement

24. Benevolent assimilation

25. Colonel Bloody Shirt pays a call

26. Fagen declares war on God

27. Major Baston tastes his own medicine

28. Funston on the march

29. Fagen goes home

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