"A strange destiny, that of some peoples!" he mused. "Because a
traveler arrives at their shores, they lose their liberty and become
subjects and slaves, not only of the traveler, not only of his heirs,
but even of all his countrymen, and not for a generation, but for
all time! A strange conception of justice! Such a state of affairs
gives ample right to exterminate every foreigner as the most ferocious
monster that the sea can cast up!"

He reflected that those islanders, against whom his country was waging
war, after all were guilty of no crime other than that of weakness. The
travelers also arrived at the shores of other peoples, but finding
them strong made no display of their strange pretension. With all
their weakness the spectacle they presented seemed beautiful to him,
and the names of the enemies, whom the newspapers did not fail to call
cowards and traitors, appeared glorious to him, as they succumbed with
glory amid the ruins of their crude fortifications, with greater glory
even than the ancient Trojan heroes, for those islanders had carried
away no Philippine Helen! In his poetic enthusiasm he thought of the
young men of those islands who could cover themselves with glory in
the eyes of their women, and in his amorous desperation he envied
them because they could find a brilliant suicide.

"Ah, I should like to die," he exclaimed, "be reduced to nothingness,
leave to my native land a glorious name, perish in its cause, defending
it from foreign invasion, and then let the sun afterwards illumine
my corpse, like a motionless sentinel on the rocks of the sea!"

The conflict with the Germans [50] came into his mind and he almost
felt sorry that it had been adjusted: he would gladly have died for