When I was leaving Havana, just after the American occupation, a young officer there was ordered to proceed at once to the Philippines. He packed all his belongings, arranged his departure, and caught a steamer for Tampa in two hours, bidding only such friends good-by as he happened to be able to hail from his cab on the way to the wharf. I met him on the steamer, and all the way to Washington he fretted and worried because steam could not drive the passenger coaches fast enough. He feared the war would be over before he could reach the Philippines; he counted the days until he could get there; he prayed that Aguinaldo might not surrender until he arrived. I received a letter from him a short time ago, and he is now praying that the rebellious leader will surrender; and he added that it was the one regret of his life that he did not miss that steamer at San Francisco, as it would have given him two weeks more at home.
In London, last year, a young Guardsman told me almost tearfully that he was ordered out to South Africa, but that he was sure Buller would finish up the war before he could get there. More than six months later I saw him in Pretoria, and he remarked hopelessly that he had come to the conclusion that he was now a permanent resident of the Transvaal.
Having gone through similar anxieties myself several times during the past few years, I had a little faith that the Boers would be able to hold out until I got there, but I naturally studied the quickest way to make the long journey. I was favored in that the new army transport _Sumner_ was ordered from New York to Manila, and I secured a passage direct to Suez. Not only was I helped along on that journey, but I had an opportunity of studying the new American transport service.
The mystery and awe which always attend a great ship starting on a voyage across the trackless ocean is intensified when the floating city is filled with men of war, who are to face death in a far-off land for their country’s honor; then the interest becomes appealing and tender. Men who have left home for the front or the post many times before now leave under new and more unknown conditions. Yet there seemed not to be an officer on the _Sumner_ who doubted his return to his native land after winning honor on the field. Already, however, several of those officers who were my companions across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and many of the men, have given up their lives in the far East.