FEBRUARY, 1901
TO THE PERSON SITTING IN DARKNESS.
BY MARK TWAIN.
Extending the Blessings of Civilization to our
Brother who Sits in Darkness has been a good trade and has paid well, on the
whole; and there is money in it yet, if carefully worked—but not enough, in my
judgment, to make any considerable risk advisable. The People that Sit in
Darkness are getting to be too scarce—too scarce and too shy. And such darkness
as is now left is really of but an indifferent quality, and not dark enough for
the game. The most of those People that Sit in Darkness have been furnished
with more light than was good for them or profitable for us. We have been
injudicious.
The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and
cautiously administered, is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory,
more sovereignty and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game
that is played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and
must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every
stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the People who Sit in Darkness
have noticed it—they have noticed it, and have begun to show alarm. They have
become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization. More—they have begun to
examine them. This is not well. The Blessings of Civilization are all right,
and a good commercial property; there could not be a better, in a dim light. In
the right kind of a light, and at a proper distance, with the goods a little
out of focus, they furnish 3this desirable exhibit
to the Gentlemen who Sit in Darkness:
LOVE, JUSTICE, GENTLENESS, CHRISTIANITY,
PROTECTION TO THE WEAK, TEMPERANCE, LAW AND ORDER, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, HONORABLE
DEALING, MERCY, EDUCATION,
—and so on.
There. Is it good? Sir, it is pie. It will bring
into camp any idiot that sits in darkness anywhere. But not if we adulterate
it. It is proper to be emphatic upon that point. This brand is strictly for
Export—apparently. Apparently. Privately and confidentially, it is nothing of
the kind. Privately and confidentially, it is merely an outside cover, gay and
pretty and attractive, displaying the special patterns of our Civilization
which we reserve for Home Consumption, while inside the bale is the Actual
Thing that the Customer Sitting in Darkness buys with his blood and tears and
land and liberty. That Actual Thing is, indeed, Civilization, but it is only
for Export. Is there a difference between the two brands? In some of the
details, yes.
We all know that the Business is being ruined.
The reason is not far to seek. It is because our Mr. McKinley, and Mr.
Chamberlain, and the Kaiser, and the Czar, and the French have been exporting
the Actual Thing with the outside cover left off. This is bad for the Game. It
shows that these new players of it are not sufficiently acquainted with it.
It is a distress to look on and note the
mismoves, they are so strange and so awkward. Mr. Chamberlain manufactures a
war out of materials so inadequate and so fanciful that they make the boxes
grieve and the gallery laugh, and he tries hard to persuade himself that it
isn’t purely a private raid for cash, but has a sort of dim, vague
respectability about it somewhere, if he could only find the spot; 4and that, by and by, he
can scour the flag clean again after he has finished dragging it through the
mud, and make it shine and flash in the vault of heaven once more as it had
shone and flashed there a thousand years in the world’s respect until he laid
his unfaithful hand upon it. It is bad play—bad. For it exposes the Actual
Thing to Them that Sit in Darkness, and they say: “What! Christian against
Christian? And only for money? Is this a case of magnanimity, forbearance,
love, gentleness, mercy, protection of the weak—this strange and over-showy
onslaught of an elephant upon a nest of field-mice, on the pretext that the
mice had squeaked an insolence at him—conduct which ‘no self-respecting
government could allow to pass unavenged?’ as Mr. Chamberlain said. Was that a
good pretext in a small case, when it had not been a good pretext in a large
one?—for only recently Russia had affronted the elephant three times and
survived alive and unsmitten. Is this Civilization and Progress? Is it
something better than we already possess? These harryings and burnings and
desert-makings in the Transvaal—is this an improvement on our darkness? Is it,
perhaps, possible that there are two kinds of Civilization—one for home
consumption and one for the heathen market?”
Then They that Sit in Darkness are troubled, and
shake their heads; and they read this extract from a letter of a British
private, recounting his exploits in one of Methuen’s victories, some days
before the affair of Magersfontein, and they are troubled again:
“We tore up the hill and into the intrenchments, and the Boers saw
we had them; so they dropped their guns and went down on their knees and put up
their hands clasped, and begged for mercy. And we gave it them—with the long
spoon.”
The long spoon is the bayonet. See Lloyd’s 5Weekly, London, of those days. The same number—and the
same column—contains some quite unconscious satire in the form of shocked and
bitter upbraidings of the Boers for their brutalities and inhumanities!
Next to our heavy damage, the Kaiser went to
playing the game without first mastering it. He lost a couple of missionaries
in a riot in Shantung, and in his account he made an overcharge for them. China
had to pay a hundred thousand dollars apiece for them, in money; twelve miles
of territory, containing several millions of inhabitants and worth twenty
million dollars, and to build a monument and also a Christian Church; whereas
the people of China could have been depended upon to remember the missionaries
without the help of these expensive memorials. This was all bad play. Bad,
because it would not, and could not, and will not now or ever, deceive the
Person Sitting in Darkness. He knows that it was an overcharge. He knows that a
missionary is like any other man; he is worth merely what you can supply his
place for, and no more. He is useful, but so is a doctor, so is a sheriff, so
is an editor; but a just Emperor does not charge war-prices for such. A
diligent, intelligent, but obscure missionary, and a diligent, intelligent
country editor are worth much, and we know it; but they are not worth the
earth. We esteem such an editor, and we are sorry to see him go; but, when he
goes, we should consider twelve miles of territory, and a church, and a
fortune, over-compensation for his loss. I mean, if he was a Chinese editor,
and we had to settle for him. It is no proper figure for an editor or a missionary;
one can get shop-worn kings for less. It was bad play on the Kaiser’s part. It
got this property, true; but it produced the Chinese revolt, the
indignant uprising of China’s traduced patriots, the Boxers. The results have
been expensive to Germany, and to the other 6Disseminators of
Progress and the Blessings of Civilization.
The Kaiser’s claim was paid, yet it was bad
play, for it could not fail to have an evil effect upon Persons Sitting in
Darkness in China. They would muse upon the event, and be likely to say:
“Civilization is gracious and beautiful, for such is its reputation; but can we
afford it? There are rich Chinamen, perhaps they could afford it; but this tax
is not laid upon them, it is laid upon the peasants of Shantung; it is they that
must pay this mighty sum, and their wages are but four cents a day. Is this a
better civilization than ours, and holier and higher and nobler? Is not this
rapacity? Is not this extortion? Would Germany charge America two hundred
thousand dollars for two missionaries, and shake the mailed fist in her face,
and send warships, and send soldiers, and say: ‘Seize twelve miles of
territory, worth twenty millions of dollars, as additional pay for the
missionaries; and make those peasants build a monument to the missionaries, and
a costly Christian church to remember them by?’ And later would Germany say to
her soldiers: ‘March through America and slay, giving no quarter;
make the German face there, as has been our Hun-face here, a terror for a
thousand years; march through the Great Republic and slay, slay, slay, carving
a road for our offended religion through its heart and bowels?’ Would Germany
do like this to America, to England, to France, to Russia? Or only to China the
helpless—imitating the elephant’s assault upon the field-mice? Had we better
invest in this Civilization—this Civilization which called Napoleon a buccaneer
for carrying off Venice’s bronze horses, but which steals our ancient
astronomical instruments from our walls, and goes looting like common
bandits—that is, all the alien soldiers except America’s; and (Americans again
excepted) storms frightened villages and cables the 7result to glad journals
at home every day: ‘Chinese losses, 450 killed; ours, one officer and
two men wounded. Shall proceed against neighboring village to-morrow, where
a massacre is reported.’ Can we afford Civilization?”
And, next, Russia must go and play the game
injudiciously. She affronts England once or twice—with the Person Sitting in
Darkness observing and noting; by moral assistance of France and Germany, she
robs Japan of her hard-earned spoil, all swimming in Chinese blood—Port Arthur—with
the Person again observing and noting; then she seizes Manchuria, raids its
villages, and chokes its great rivers with the swollen corpses of countless
massacred peasants—that astonished Person still observing and noting. And
perhaps he is saying to himself: “It is yet another Civilized
Power, with its banner of the Prince of Peace in one hand and its loot-basket
and its butcher-knife in the other. Is there no salvation for us but to adopt
Civilization and lift ourselves down to its level?”
And by and by comes America, and our Master of
the Game plays it badly—plays it as Mr. Chamberlain was playing it in South
Africa. It was a mistake to do that; also, it was one which was quite unlooked
for in a Master who was playing it so well in Cuba. In Cuba, he was playing the
usual and regular American game, and it was winning, for there
is no way to beat it. The Master, contemplating Cuba, said: “Here is an
oppressed and friendless little nation which is willing to fight to be free; we
go partners, and put up the strength of seventy million sympathizers, and the
resources of the United States: play!” Nothing but Europe combined could call that
hand: and Europe cannot combine on anything. There, in Cuba, he was following
our great traditions in a way which made us very proud of him, and proud of the
deep dissatisfaction which his play was provoking in Continental Europe. 8Moved by a high inspiration,
he threw out those stirring words which proclaimed that forcible annexation
would be “criminal aggression;” and in that utterance fired another “shot heard
round the world.” The memory of that fine saying will be outlived by the
remembrance of no act of his but one—that he forgot it within the twelvemonth,
and its honorable gospel along with it.
For, presently, came the Philippine temptation.
It was strong; it was too strong, and he made that bad mistake: he played the
European game, the Chamberlain game. It was a pity; it was a great pity, that
error; that one grievous error, that irrevocable error. For it was the very
place and time to play the American game again. And at no cost. Rich winnings
to be gathered in, too; rich and permanent; indestructible; a fortune
transmissible forever to the children of the flag. Not land, not money, not
dominion—no, something worth many times more than that dross: our share, the
spectacle of a nation of long harassed and persecuted slaves set free through
our influence; our posterity’s share, the golden memory of that fair deed. The
game was in our hands. If it had been played according to the American rules,
Dewey would have sailed away from Manila as soon as he had destroyed the
Spanish fleet—after putting up a sign on shore guaranteeing foreign property
and life against damage by the Filipinos, and warning the Powers that interference
with the emancipated patriots would be regarded as an act unfriendly to the
United States. The Powers cannot combine, in even a bad cause, and the sign
would not have been molested.
Dewey could have gone about his affairs
elsewhere, and left the competent Filipino army to starve out the little
Spanish garrison and send it home, and the Filipino citizens to set up the form
of government they might prefer, and deal with the friars and their doubtful
acquisitions according to 9Filipino ideas of fairness and justice—ideas
which have since been tested and found to be of as high an order as any that
prevail in Europe or America.
But we played the Chamberlain game, and lost the
chance to add another Cuba and another honorable deed to our good record.
The more we examine the mistake, the more
clearly we perceive that it is going to be bad for the Business. The Person
Sitting in Darkness is almost sure to say: “There is something curious about
this—curious and unaccountable. There must be two Americas: one that sets the
captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him,
and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get
his land.”
The truth is, the Person Sitting in Darkness is
saying things like that; and for the sake of the Business we must persuade him
to look at the Philippine matter in another and healthier way. We must arrange
his opinions for him. I believe it can be done; for Mr. Chamberlain has
arranged England’s opinion of the South African matter, and done it most
cleverly and successfully. He presented the facts—some of the facts—and showed
those confiding people what the facts meant. He did it statistically, which is
a good way. He used the formula: “Twice 2 are 14, and 2 from 9 leaves 35.”
Figures are effective; figures will convince the elect.
Now, my plan is a still bolder one than Mr.
Chamberlain’s, though apparently a copy of it. Let us be franker than Mr.
Chamberlain; let us audaciously present the whole of the facts, shirking none,
then explain them according to Mr. Chamberlain’s formula. This daring
truthfulness will astonish and dazzle the Person Sitting in Darkness, and he
will take the Explanation down before his mental vision has had time to get
back into focus. Let us say to him:
10“Our case is simple. On
the 1st of May, Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet. This left the Archipelago in
the hands of its proper and rightful owners, the Filipino nation. Their army
numbered 30,000 men, and they were competent to whip out or starve out the
little Spanish garrison; then the people could set up a government of their own
devising. Our traditions required that Dewey should now set up his warning
sign, and go away. But the Master of the Game happened to think of another
plan—the European plan. He acted upon it. This was, to send out an
army—ostensibly to help the native patriots put the finishing touch upon their
long and plucky struggle for independence, but really to take their land away
from them and keep it. That is, in the interest of Progress and Civilization.
The plan developed, stage by stage, and quite satisfactorily. We entered into a
military alliance with the trusting Filipinos, and they hemmed in Manila on the
land side, and by their valuable help the place, with its garrison of 8,000 or
10,000 Spaniards, was captured—a thing which we could not have accomplished
unaided at that time. We got their help by—by ingenuity. We knew they were
fighting for their independence, and that they had been at it for two years. We
knew they supposed that we also were fighting in their worthy cause—just as we
had helped the Cubans fight for Cuban independence—and we allowed them to go on
thinking so. Until Manila was ours and we could get along without them. Then
we showed our hand. Of course, they were surprised—that was natural; surprised
and disappointed; disappointed and grieved. To them it looked un-American;
un-characteristic; foreign to our established traditions. And this was natural,
too; for we were only playing the American Game in public—in private it was the
European. It was neatly done, very neatly, and it bewildered them so they could
not 11understand it; for we had been so friendly—so
affectionate, even—with those simple-minded patriots! We, our own selves, had
brought back out of exile their leader, their hero, their hope, their
Washington—Aguinaldo; brought him in a warship, in high honor, under the sacred
shelter and hospitality of the flag; brought him back and restored him to his
people, and got their moving and eloquent gratitude for it. Yes, we had been so
friendly to them, and had heartened them up in so many ways! We had lent them
guns and ammunition; advised with them; exchanged pleasant courtesies with
them; placed our sick and wounded in their kindly care; entrusted our Spanish
prisoners to their humane and honest hands; fought shoulder to shoulder with
them against “the common enemy” (our own phrase); praised their courage,
praised their gallantry, praised their mercifulness, praised their fine and
honorable conduct; borrowed their trenches, borrowed strong positions which
they had previously captured from the Spaniards; petted them, lied to
them—officially proclaiming that our land and naval forces came to give them
their freedom and displace the bad Spanish Government—fooled them, used them
until we needed them no longer; then derided the sucked orange and threw it
away. We kept the positions which we had beguiled them of; by and by, we moved
a force forward and overlapped patriot ground—a clever thought, for we needed
trouble, and this would produce it. A Filipino soldier, crossing the ground,
where no one had a right to forbid him, was shot by our sentry. The badgered
patriots resented this with arms, without waiting to know whether Aguinaldo,
who was absent, would approve or not. Aguinaldo did not approve; but that
availed nothing. What we wanted, in the interest of Progress and Civilization,
was the Archipelago, unencumbered by patriots struggling for independence; and
the War was what we 12needed. We clinched our opportunity. It is Mr.
Chamberlain’s case over again—at least in its motive and intention; and we
played the game as adroitly as he played it himself.”
At this point in our frank statement of fact to
the Person Sitting in Darkness, we should throw in a little trade-taffy about
the Blessings of Civilization—for a change, and for the refreshment of his
spirit—then go on with our tale:
“We and the patriots having captured Manila,
Spain’s ownership of the Archipelago and her sovereignty over it were at an
end—obliterated—annihilated—not a rag or shred of either remaining behind. It
was then that we conceived the divinely humorous idea of buying both
of these spectres from Spain! [It is quite safe to confess this to the Person
Sitting in Darkness, since neither he nor any other sane person will believe
it.] In buying those ghosts for twenty millions, we also contracted to take
care of the friars and their accumulations. I think we also agreed to propagate
leprosy and smallpox, but as to this there is doubt. But it is not important;
persons afflicted with the friars do not mind the other diseases.
“With our treaty ratified, Manila subdued, and
our Ghosts secured, we had no further use for Aguinaldo and the owners of the
Archipelago. We forced a war, and we have been hunting America’s guest and ally
through the woods and swamps ever since.”
At this point in the tale, it will be well to
boast a little of our war-work and our heroisms in the field, so as to make our
performance look as fine as England’s in South Africa; but I believe it will
not be best to emphasize this too much. We must be cautious. Of course, we must
read the war-telegrams to the Person, in order to keep up our frankness; but we
can throw an air of humorousness over them, and that will modify their grim
eloquence a 13little, and their rather indiscreet exhibitions
of gory exultation. Before reading to him the following display heads of the
dispatches of November 18, 1900, it will be well to practice on them in private
first, so as to get the right tang of lightness and gaiety into them:
“ADMINISTRATION WEARY OF
PROTRACTED HOSTILITIES!”
“REAL WAR AHEAD FOR
FILIPINO REBELS!”[1]
“WILL SHOW NO MERCY!”
“KITCHENER’S PLAN
ADOPTED!”
1. “Rebels!” Mumble that funny word—don’t let the
Person catch it distinctly.
Kitchener knows how to handle disagreeable
people who are fighting for their homes and their liberties, and we must let on
that we are merely imitating Kitchener, and have no national interest in the
matter, further than to get ourselves admired by the Great Family of Nations,
in which august company our Master of the Game has bought a place for us in the
back row.
Of course, we must not venture to ignore our
General MacArthur’s reports—oh, why do they keep on printing those embarrassing
things?—we must drop them trippingly from the tongue and take the chances:
“During the last ten months our losses have been
268 killed and 750 wounded; Filipino loss, three thousand two hundred
and twenty-seven killed, and 694 wounded.”
We must stand ready to grab the Person Sitting
in Darkness, for he will swoon away at this confession, saying: “Good God,
those ‘niggers’ spare their wounded, and the Americans massacre theirs!”
We must bring him to, and coax him and coddle
him, and assure him that the ways of Providence are best, and that it would not
become us to find fault with them; and then, to show him that we are only
imitators, not originators, we must read the following passage from the letter
of an American soldier-lad in the Philippines to his mother, published 14in Public
Opinion, of Decorah, Iowa, describing the finish of a victorious battle:
“We never
left one alive. If one was wounded, we would run our bayonets through him.”
Having now laid all the historical facts before
the Person Sitting in Darkness, we should bring him to again, and explain them
to him. We should say to him:
“They look doubtful, but in reality they are not.
There have been lies; yes, but they were told in a good cause. We have been
treacherous; but that was only in order that real good might come out of
apparent evil. True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people; we have
turned against the weak and the friendless who trusted us; we have stamped out
a just and intelligent and well-ordered republic; we have stabbed an ally in
the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a Shadow from an enemy
that hadn’t it to sell; we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and his
liberty; we have invited our clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket
and do bandit’s work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear,
not to follow; we have debauched America’s honor and blackened her face before
the world; but each detail was for the best. We know this. The Head of every
State and Sovereignty in Christendom and ninety per cent. of every legislative
body in Christendom, including our Congress and our fifty State Legislatures,
are members not only of the church, but also of the Blessings-of-Civilization
Trust. This world-girdling accumulation of trained morals, high principles, and
justice, cannot do an unright thing, an unfair thing, an ungenerous thing, an
unclean thing. It knows what it is about. Give yourself no uneasiness; it is
all right.”
Now then, that will convince the Person. You
will see. It will restore the Business. Also, it will 15elect the Master of the
Game to the vacant place in the Trinity of our national gods; and there on
their high thrones the Three will sit, age after age, in the people’s sight,
each bearing the Emblem of his service: Washington, the Sword of the Liberator;
Lincoln, the Slave’s Broken Chains; the Master, the Chains Repaired.
It will give the Business a splendid new start.
You will see.
Everything is prosperous, now; everything is
just as we should wish it. We have got the Archipelago, and we shall never give
it up. Also, we have every reason to hope that we shall have an opportunity
before very long to slip out of our Congressional contract with Cuba and give
her something better in the place of it. It is a rich country, and many of us
are already beginning to see that the contract was a sentimental mistake. But
now—right now—is the best time to do some profitable rehabilitating work—work
that will set us up and make us comfortable, and discourage gossip. We cannot
conceal from ourselves that, privately, we are a little troubled about our
uniform. It is one of our prides; it is acquainted with honor; it is familiar
with great deeds and noble; we love it, we revere it; and so this errand it is
on makes us uneasy. And our flag—another pride of ours, our chiefest! We have
worshipped it so; and when we have seen it in far lands—glimpsing it
unexpectedly in that strange sky, waving its welcome and benediction to us—we
have caught our breath and uncovered our heads, and couldn’t speak, for a
moment, for the thought of what it was to us and the great ideals it stood for.
Indeed, we must do something about these things: we must not
have the flag out there, and the uniform. They are not needed there; we can
manage in some other way. England manages, as regards the uniform, and so can
we. We have to send soldiers—we can’t get out of that—but we can 16disguise them. It is the
way England does in South Africa. Even Mr. Chamberlain himself takes pride in
England’s honorable uniform, and makes the army down there wear an ugly and
odious and appropriate disguise, of yellow stuff such as quarantine flags are
made of, and which are hoisted to warn the healthy away from unclean disease
and repulsive death. This cloth is called khaki. We could adopt it. It is
light, comfortable, grotesque, and deceives the enemy, for he cannot conceive
of a soldier being concealed in it.
And as for a flag for the Philippine Province,
it is easily managed. We can have a special one—our States do it: we can have
just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars
replaced by the skull and cross-bones.
And we do not need that Civil Commission out
there. Having no powers, it has to invent them, and that kind of work cannot be
effectively done by just anybody; an expert is required. Mr. Croker can be
spared. We do not want the United States represented there, but only the Game.
By help of these suggested amendments, Progress
and Civilization in that country can have a boom, and it will take in the
Persons who are Sitting in Darkness, and we can resume Business at the old
stand.
Last known photo of Mark Twain. He said -“I
came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835 and I expect to go out with it”. Twain’s prediction
was accurate, as he ended up dying of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, just
weeks before Halley’s Comet approached the Earth again on May 6.1910
