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In February 1899, Rudyard Kipling's classic exhortation to empire, "The
White Man's Burden," was published in McClure's Magazine, the
Philippine-American War started, and the U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty of
Paris. The treaty officially ended the Spanish-American War, ceded Puerto Rico,
Guam, and the Philippines to the United States, and placed Cuba under U.S.
control.
When he returned to the United States from Europe the following year, Mark Twain
highlighted the treaty when he declared himself an anti-imperialist in dockside
interviews. "I have read carefully the treaty of Paris," he told
the reporters. "I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to
subjugate, the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to
redeem.... And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put
its talons on any other land."
Within the next few months he made a made a number of additional
statements against imperialism and the war in the Philippines and on January
13, 1901, he agreed to serve as a vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League
of New York. Those early statements led to a little-known episode of mutual
inspiration involving Twain, Anti-Imperialist League of New York President
Ernest Crosby, and Dan Beard, illustrator of A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur's Court.
A New Cervantes
On January 16, 1901, three days after Twain joined the Anti-Imperialist League
of New York, Ernest Crosby gave a speech on "The Absurdities of
Militarism" at Tremont Temple in Boston. During the speech he suggested
that "a new Cervantes" should arise to destroy militarism by making it
laughable.
Mr. Dooley has
done excellent work in this direction. Mark Twain has given some evidence of
his insight into the truth. Will not one of these gentlemen, or some other
genius yet to be discovered, turn his winged shafts squarely against war and
the war-maker?
After the speech, two officers of the New England Anti-Imperialist League who
were in the audience suggested to Crosby that he write the book himself. He
accepted their advice and wrote Captain Jinks, Hero, the first of only
two anti-imperialist novels published during the Philippine-American War. Dan
Beard illustrated the novel, and in December 1901 he asked Mark Twain to review
it.
The Radical Reformer
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Ernest Crosby
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Ernest Crosby was
arguably the most prominent radical social reformer in New York City at the turn
of the century. He was the country's leading disciple of Tolstoy
and was actively involved with the single
tax movement that had inspired many of Beard's illustrations for A
Connecticut Yankee. He was president of the Social Reform Club of New York,
the Civic Council of New York, and the Anti-Imperialist League of New York, and
served on the advisory committee of the People's Institute, on the executive
committee of the American Friends of Russian Freedom, and on the boards of
various other national and local reform organizations.
Crosby was also a popular public speaker on reform issues and a prolific
writer of essays, poems, and letters to the editor. His writings appeared in
publications as diverse as the New York Times, The Social Gospel,
and the International Socialist Review. When it reviewed Captain
Jinks, Hero in March of 1902, the Worcester (Mass.) Daily Spy
claimed that "next to Mark Twain, Ernest Crosby... is the best known writer
against American 'militarism.'"
Twain's association with the Anti-Imperialist League of New York was new in
January 1901 when Crosby gave his speech, but he had been associated with the American
Friends of Russian Freedom for ten years. It is likely that Twain also knew
about Crosby through his friend William
Dean Howells, an admirer of Tolstoy who occasionally spoke before the Social
Reform Club of New York. In April of 1898, Howells joined Crosby and others in a
"Peace Appeal
to Labor" against the Spanish-American War. On November 13, 1901, a
month before Dan Beard asked him to review Crosby's novel, Twain attended a
meeting of officers of the Anti-Imperialist League of New York and probably met
Crosby there.
Satire Incarnated
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Dan Beard's illustration for chapter 10.
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After Dan Beard asked him to review the novel, Twain invited
Crosby to meet with him at his Riverdale home and readily agreed
to review his book. His comments were apparently intended for use
in publicity for the novel, which was published on February 28,
1902. But by mid-January he was overwhelmed with social
commitments and couldn't give the review the time he originally
intended. He finally wrote a paragraph about the book on February
23 but it was too little too late and remained unpublished until
1992.
Twain's comments were confined to one chapter that parodied
General Frederick Funston's deceitful capture of the Filipino
leader Emilio Aguinaldo. It began:
I recognize that Chapter X. of 'Captain Jinks' is a successful
satire on General Funston -- at least almost a successful
one. No satire of Funston could reach perfection, because
Funston occupies that summit himself. In his own person Funston
is satire incarnated, and exhaustively comprehensive: he is a
satire on the human race.
Mutual Inspiration
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A Blood Brotherhood.
Illustration by Dan Beard.
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Twain's early anti-imperialist statements inspired Crosby to start
thinking about a book ridiculing militarism, and Captain Jinks,
Hero addresses some of the same subjects Twain addressed in
his anti-imperialist writings and speeches of late 1900 and early
1901. Although it develops a more thorough critique of militarism
and the military profession than Twain might have supported, it
includes chapters satirizing hazing
at West Point, the business of extending the
"blessings of civilization," and missionary activities
in China. In Crosby's version of events in China, a "Rev.
Amen" fills in for Rev. William Ament, the missionary Twain
criticized in "To
the Person Sitting in Darkness" and "To
My Missionary Critics." Dan Beard's illustration "A
Blood Brotherhood" fits "To the Person Sitting in
Darkness" just as well as Crosby's novel.
Crosby's chapter about General Funston seems to have inspired
Twain to write his own essay on the subject. In a private
postscript added to the review paragraph, Twain noted that he
wrote his own article about Funston the night before. "A
Defence of General Funston" appeared in the May 1902
issue of the North American Review. Twain had been working
on a more serious "Review of Edwin Wildman's Biography of
Aguinaldo." After reading Crosby's book, he abandoned that
essay and incorporated part of it into "A Defence of General
Funston," his own almost successful satire of the man
who was "satire incarnated."
Afterward
Both Mark Twain and Ernest Crosby remained officers of the
Anti-Imperialist League until their deaths. More than many of
their colleagues in the movement, they felt comfortable with the
epithets that were thrown at them by supporters of imperialism. In
the postscript at the end of "A Defence of General
Funston," Twain identified himself as a spokesperson for the
"Traitors":
I think I may speak for the other Traitors, for I am sure they
feel as I do about it. I will explain that we get our title from
the Funstonian Patriots -- free of charge. They are always doing
us little compliments like that; they are just born flatterers,
those boys.
Later in the year, Crosby dedicated his volume of anti-imperialist
poems, Swords and Plowshares, "To the Noble Army of
Traitors and Heretics." Twain participated in a memorial
service for Crosby in 1907, and he donated a copy of Swords and
Plowshares to the Mark Twain Library in Redding, Connecticut,
after it was founded the following year. |
