A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT FOR OUR
BLUSHING EXILES | (1898)
... Well, what do you think of our country now? And what do you think of the figure she is cutting before the eyes of the world? For one, I am ashamed--(Extract from a long and heated letter from a Voluntary Exile, Member of the American Colony, Paris.)
And so you are ashamed. I am trying to think out what it can have been that has produced this large attitude of mind and this fine flow of sarcasm. Apparently you are ashamed to look Europe in the face; ashamed of the American name; temporarily ashamed of your nationality. By the light of remarks made to me by an American here in Vienna, I judge that you are ashamed because:
1. We are meddling where we have no business and no right; meddling with the private family matters of a sister nation; intruding upon her sacred right to do as she pleases with her own, unquestioned by anybody.
2. We are doing this under a sham humanitarian pretext.
3. Doing it in order to filch Cuba, the formal and distinct disclaimer in the ultimatum being very, very thin humbug, and easily detectable as such by you and virtuous Europe.
4. And finally you are ashamed of all this because it is new, and base, and brutal, and dishonest; and because Europe, having had no previous experience of such things, is horrified by it and can never respect us nor associate with us any more.
Brutal, base, dishonest? We? Land thieves? Shedders of innocent blood? We? Traitors to our official word? We? Are we going to lose Europe’s respect because of this new and dreadful conduct? Russia’s, for instance? Is she lying stretched out on her back in Manchuria, with her head among her Siberian prisons and her feet in Port Arthur, trying to read over the fairy tales she told Lord Salisbury, and not able to do it for crying because we are maneuvering to treacherously smouch Cuba from feeble Spain, and because we are ungently shedding innocent Spanish blood?
Is it France’s respect that we are going to lose? Is our unchivalric conduct troubling a nation which exists to-day because a brave young girl saved it when its poltroons had lost it--a nation which deserted her as one man when her day of peril came? Is our treacherous assault upon a weak people distressing a nation which contributed Bartholomew’s Day to human history? Is our ruthless spirit offending the sensibilities of the nation which gave us the Reign of Terror to read about? Is our unmanly intrusion into the private affairs of a sister nation shocking the feelings of the people who sent Maximilian to Mexico? Are our shabby and pusillanimous ways outraging the fastidious people who have sent an innocent man (Dreyfus) to a living hell, taken to their embraces the slimy guilty one, and submitted to a thousand indignities Emile Zola--the manliest man in France?
Is it Spain’s respect that we are going to lose? Is she sitting sadly conning her great history and contrasting it with our meddling, cruel, perfidious one--our shameful history of foreign robberies, humanitarian shams, and annihilations of weak and unoffending nations? Is she remembering with pride how she sent Columbus home in chains; how she sent half of the harmless West Indians into slavery and the rest to the grave, leaving not one alive; how she robbed and slaughtered the Inca’s gentle race, then beguiled the Inca into her power with fair promises and burned him at the stake; how she drenched the New World in blood, and earned and got the name of The Nation with the Bloody Footprint; how she drove all the Jews out of Spain in a day, allowing them to sell their property, but forbidding them to carry any money out of the country; how she roasted heretics by the thousands and thousands in her public squares, generation after generation, her kings and her priests looking on as at a holiday show; how her Holy Inquisition imported hell into the earth; how she was the first to institute it and the last to give it up--and then only under compulsion; how, with a spirit unmodified by time, she still tortures her prisoners to-day; how, with her ancient passion for pain and blood unchanged, she still crowds the arena with ladies and gentlemen and priests to see with delight a bull harried and persecuted and a gored horse dragging his entrails on the ground; and how, with this incredible character surviving all attempts to civilize it, her Duke of Alva rises again in the person of General Weyler--to-day the most idolized personage in Spain--and we see a hundred thousand women and children shut up in pens and pitilessly starved to death?
Are we indeed going to lose Spain’s respect? Is there no way to avoid this calamity--or this compliment? Are we going to lose her respect because we have made a promise in our ultimatum which she thinks we shall break? And meantime is she trying to recall some promise of her own which she has kept?
Is the Professional Official Fibber of Europe really troubled with our morals? Dear Parisian friend, are you taking seriously the daily remark of the newspaper and the orator about “this noble nation with an illustrious history”? That is mere kindness, mere charity for a people in temporary hard luck. The newspaper and the orator do not mean it. They wink when they say it.
And so you are ashamed. Do not be ashamed; there is no occasion for it.
DUELING
(Vienna, Austria, 1898)
This pastime is as common in Austria to-day as it is in France. But with this difference--that here in the Austrian states the duel is dangerous, while in France it is not. Here it is tragedy, in France it is comedy; here it is a solemnity, there it is monkeyshines; here the duelist risks his life, there he does not even risk his shirt. Here he fights with pistol or saber, in France with a hairpin--a blunt one. Here the desperately wounded man tries to walk to the hospital; there they paint the scratch so that they can find it again, lay the sufferer on a stretcher, and conduct him off the field with a band of music.
At the end of a French duel the pair hug and kiss and cry, and praise each other’s valor; then the surgeons make an examination and pick out the scratched one, and the other one helps him on to the litter and pays his fare; and in return the scratched one treats to champagne and oysters in the evening, and then “the incident is closed,” as the French say. It is all polite, and gracious, and pretty, and impressive. At the end of an Austrian duel the antagonist that is alive gravely offers his hand to the other man, utters some phrases of courteous regret, then bids him good-by and goes his way, and that incident also is closed. The French duelist is painstakingly protected from danger, by the rules of the game. His antagonist’s weapon cannot reach so far as his body; if he gets a scratch it will not be above his elbow. But in Austria the rules of the game do not provide against danger, they carefully provide for it, usually. Commonly the combat must be kept up until one of the men is disabled; a nondisabling slash or stab does not retire him.
For a matter of three months I watched the Viennese journals, and whenever a duel was reported in their telegraphic columns I scrap-booked it. By this record I find that dueling in Austria is not confined to journalists and old maids, as in France, but is indulged in by military men, journalists, students, physicians, lawyers, members of the legislature, and even the Cabinet, the bench, and the police. Dueling is forbidden by law; and so it seems odd to see the makers and administrators of the laws dancing on their work in this way. Some months ago Count Badeni, at that time chief of the government, fought a pistol duel here in the capital city of the Empire with Representative Wolf, and both of those distinguished Christians came near getting turned out of the Church--for the Church as well as the state forbids dueling.
In one case, lately, in Hungary, the police interfered and stopped a duel after the first innings. This was a saber duel between the chief of police and the city attorney. Unkind things were said about it by the newspapers. They said the police remembered their duty uncommonly well when their own officials were the parties concerned in duels. But I think the underlings showed bread-and-butter judgment. If their superiors had carved each other well, the public would have asked, “Where were the police?” and their place would have been endangered; but custom does not require them to be around where mere unofficial citizens are explaining a thing with sabers.
There was another duel--a double duel--going on in the immediate neighborhood at the time, and in this case the police obeyed custom and did not disturb it. Their bread and butter was not at stake there. In this duel a physician fought a couple of surgeons, and wounded both--one of them lightly, the other seriously. An undertaker wanted to keep people from interfering, but that was quite natural again.
Selecting at random from my record, I next find a duel at Tranopol between military men. An officer of the Tenth Dragoons charged an officer of the Ninth Dragoons with an offense against the laws of the card table. There was a defect or a doubt somewhere in the matter, and this had to be examined and passed upon by a court of honor. So the case was sent up to Lemberg for this purpose. One would like to know what the defect was, but the newspaper does not say. A man here who has fought many duels and has a graveyard says that probably the matter in question was as to whether the accusation was true or not; that if the charge was a very grave one--cheating, for instance--proof of its truth would rule the guilty officer out of the field of honor; the court would not allow a gentleman to fight with such a person. You see what a solemn thing it is; you see how particular they are; any little careless speech can lose you your privilege of getting yourself shot, here. The court seems to have gone into the matter in a searching and careful fashion, for several months elapsed before it reached a decision. It then sanctioned a duel and the accused killed his accuser.
Next I find a duel between a prince and a major; first with pistols--no result satisfactory to either party; then with sabers, and the major badly hurt.
Next, a saber duel between journalists--the one a strong man, the other feeble and in poor health. It was brief; the strong one drove his sword through the weak one, and death was immediate.
Next, a duel between a lieutenant and a student of medicine. According to the newspaper report, these are the details: The student was in a restaurant one evening; passing along, he halted at a table to speak with some friends; near by sat a dozen military men; the student conceived that one of these was “staring” at him; he asked the officer to step outside and explain. This officer and another one gathered up their capes and sabers and went out with the student. Outside--this is the student’s account--the student introduced himself to the offending officer and said, “You seemed to stare at me”; for answer, the officer struck the student with his fist; the student parried the blow; both officers drew their sabers and attacked the young fellow, and one of them gave him a wound on the left arm; then they withdrew. This was Saturday night. The duel followed on Monday, in the military riding school--the customary dueling ground all over Austria, apparently. The weapons were pistols. The dueling terms were somewhat beyond custom in the matter of severity, if I may gather that from the statement that the combat was fought “unter sehr schweren Bedingungen”--to wit, “distance, 15 steps--with 3 steps advance.” There was but one exchange of shots. The student was hit. “He put his hand on his breast, his body began to bend slowly forward, then collapsed in death and sank to the ground.”
It is pathetic. There are other duels in my list, but I find in each and all of them one and the same ever-recurring defect--the principals are never present, but only by their sham representatives. The real principals in any duel are not the duelists themselves, but their families. They do the mourning, the suffering; theirs is the loss and theirs the misery. They stake all that, the duelist stakes nothing but his life, and that is a trivial thing compared with what his death must cost those whom he leaves behind him. Challenges should not mention the duelist; he has nothing much at stake, and the real vengeance cannot reach him. The challenge should summon the offender’s old gray mother and his young wife and his little children--these, or any of whom he is a dear and worshiped possession--and should say, “You have done me no harm, but I am the meek slave of a custom which requires me to crush the happiness out of your hearts and condemn you to years of pain and grief, in order that I may wash clean with your tears a stain which has been put upon me by another person.”
The logic of it is admirable; a person has robbed me of a penny; I must beggar ten innocent persons to make good my loss. Surely nobody’s “honor” is worth all that.
Since the duelist’s family are the real principals in a duel, the state ought to compel them to be present at it. Custom, also, ought to be so amended as to require it; and without it no duel ought to be allowed to go on. If that student’s unoffending mother had been present and watching the officer through her tears as he raised his pistol, he--why, he would have fired in the air! We know that. For we know how we are all made. Laws ought to be based upon the ascertained facts of our nature. It would be a simple thing to make a dueling law which would stop dueling.
As things are now, the mother is never invited. She submits to this; and without outward complaint, for she, too, is the vassal of custom, and custom requires her to conceal her pain when she learns the disastrous news that her son must go to the dueling field, and by the powerful force that is lodged in habit and custom she is enabled to obey this trying requirement--a requirement which exacts a miracle of her, and gets it. In January a neighbor of ours who has a young son in the army was awakened by this youth at three o’clock one morning, and she sat up in bed and listened to his message:
“I have come to tell you something, mother, which will distress you, but you must be good and brave and bear it. I have been affronted by a fellow officer and we fight at three this afternoon. Lie down and sleep, now, and think no more about it.”
She kissed him good night and lay down paralyzed with grief and fear, but said nothing. But she did not sleep; she prayed and mourned till the first streak of dawn, then fled to the nearest church and implored the Virgin for help; and from that church she went to another and another; church after church, and still church after church, and so spent all the day until three o’clock on her knees in agony and tears; then dragged herself home and sat down, comfortless and desolate, to count the minutes, and wait, with an outward show of calm, for what had been ordained for her--happiness, or endless misery. Presently she heard the clank of a saber--she had not known before what music was in that sound--and her son put his head in and said:
“X was in the wrong and he apologized.”
So that incident was closed; and for the rest of her life the mother will always find something pleasant about the clank of a saber, no doubt.
In one of my listed duels--However, let it go, there is nothing particularly striking about it except that the seconds interfered. And prematurely, too, for neither man was dead. This was certainly irregular. Neither of the men liked it. It was a duel with cavalry sabers, between an editor and a lieutenant. The editor walked to the hospital; the lieutenant was carried. In Austria an editor who can write well is valuable, but he is not likely to remain so unless he can handle a saber with charm.
The following very recent telegram shows that also in France duels are humanely stopped as soon as they approach the (French) danger point:
(Reuter’s Telegram)
Paris, March 5th.
The duel between Colonels Henry and Picquart took place this morning in the riding school of the École Militaire, the doors of which were strictly guarded in order to prevent intrusion. The combatants, who fought with swords, were in position at ten o’clock.
At the first re-engagement Lieut.-Col. Henry was slightly scratched in the forearm, and just at the same moment his own blade appeared to touch his adversary’s neck. Senator Ranc, who was Colonel Picquart’s second, stopped the fight, but as it was found that his principal had not been touched, the combat continued. A very sharp encounter ensued, in which Colonel Henry was wounded in the elbow, and the duel then terminated.
After which the stretcher and the band. In lurid contrast with this delicate flirtation, we have an account of a deadly duel of day before yesterday in Italy, where the earnest Austrian duel is in vogue. I knew one of the principals, Cavalotti, slightly, and this gives me a sort of personal interest in his duel. I first saw him in Rome several years ago. He was sitting on a block of stone in the Forum, and was writing something in his notebook--a poem or a challenge, or something like that--and the friend who pointed him out to me said, “That is Cavalotti--he has fought thirty duels; do not disturb him.” I did not disturb him.
SKELETON PLAN OF A PROPOSED
CASTING VOTE PARTY
(1901)
Note.--Mark Twain’s effort was always for clean politics. In 1901 he formulated what to him seemed a feasible plan to obtain this boon. It is here first published.--A. B. P.
ITS MAIN OBJECT
To compel the two Great Parties to nominate their best man always.
FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES
With the offices all filled by the best men of either of the two Great Parties, we shall have good government. We hold that this is beyond dispute, and does not need to be argued.
DETAILS
1. The C. V. Party should be organized. This, in order to secure its continuance and permanency.
2. Any of the following acts must sever the connection of a member with the Casting Vote party:
- The seeking of any office, appointive or elective.
- The acceptance of a nomination to any such office.
- The acceptance of such an office.
3. The organization should never vote for any but a nominee of one or the other of the two Great Parties, and should then cast their entire vote for that nominee.
4. They should have no dealings with minor parties.
5. There should be ward organizations, township, town, city, congressional district, state and national organizations. The party should work wherever there is an elective office, from the lowest up to the Presidency.
6. As a rule, none of the organizations will need to be large. In most cases they will be able to control the action of the two Great Parties without that. In the matter of membership, quality will be the main thing, rather than quantity.
In small constituencies, where a town constable or a justice of the peace is to be elected it will often be the case that a Casting Vote lodge of fifty members can elect the nominee it prefers. In every such community the material for the fifty is present. It will be found among the men who are disgusted with the prevailing political methods, the low ambitions and ideals, of the politicians; dishonesty in office; corruption; the frank distribution of appointments among characterless and incompetent men as pay for party service; the evasion and sometimes straight-out violation of the civil-service laws. The fifty will be found among the men who are ashamed of this condition of things and who have despaired of seeing it bettered; who stay away from the polls and do not vote; who do not attend primaries, and would be insulted there if they did.
The fifty exist in every little community; they are not seen, not heard, not regarded--but they are there. There, and deeply and sincerely desirous of good and sound government, and ready to give the best help they can if any will place before them a competent way. They are reserved and quiet merchants and shopkeepers, middle-aged; they are young men making their way in the offices of doctors and lawyers and behind counters; they are journeyman high-class mechanics; they are organizers of, and workers for, the community’s charities, art and other social-improvement clubs, university settlements, Young Men’s Christian Association, circulating libraries; they are readers of books, frequenters of the library. They have never seen a primary, and they have an aversion for the polls.
7. Men proposing to create a Casting Vote lodge should not advertise their purpose; conspiracies for good, like conspiracies for evil, are best conducted privately until success is sure. The poll of the two Great Parties should be examined, and the winning party’s majority noted. It is this majority which the Casting Vote must overcome and nullify. If the total vote cast was 1,000 and the majority vote fifty, the proposers of a lodge should canvass privately until they have secured 75 or 100 names; they can organize then, without solicitude; the balance of power is in their hands, and this fact by itself will add names to its membership. If the total vote is 10,000 and the majority vote 1,000, the procedure should be as before: the thousand-and-upward should be secured by private canvass before public organization is instituted. Where a total vote is 1,000,000 the majority vote is not likely to exceed 30,000. Five or six canvassers can begin the listing; each man secured becomes a canvasser, ten know three apiece who will join; the thirty know three apiece who will join; the ninety know three hundred, the three hundred know a thousand, the thousand know three thousand--and so on; the required thirty or forty thousand can be secured in ten days, the lodge organized, and its casting vote be ready and self-pledged and competent to elect the best of the nominees the two Great Parties may put up at that date or later.
8. In every ward of every city there is enough of this material to hold the balance of power over the two Great Parties in a ward election; in every city there is enough of it to determine which of the two nominees shall be mayor; in every congressional district there is enough of it to elect the Governor; also to elect the legislature and choose the U. S. Senators; and in the United States there is enough of it to throw the Casting Vote for its choice between the nominees of the two Great Parties and seat him in the presidential chair.
9. From constable up to President there is no office for which the two Great Parties cannot furnish able, clean, and acceptable men. Whenever the balance of power shall be lodged in a permanent third party with no candidates of its own and no function but to cast its whole vote for the best man put forward by the Republicans and Democrats, these two parties will select the best men they have in their ranks. Good and clean government will follow, let its party complexion be what it may; and the country will be quite content.
THE LODGES
The primal lodge--call it A--should consist of 10 men only. It is enough and can meet in a dwelling house or a shop, and get well acquainted at once. It has before it the names of the nominees of the two Great Parties--Jones (Republican), Smith (Democrat). It fails of unanimity--both candidates perchance being good men and about equally acceptable--and casts seven votes, say, for Jones and three for Smith.
It elects one of its ten to meet similar delegates from any number of local A lodges and hand in its vote. This body--call it a B lodge--examines the aggregate vote; this time the majority may be with Smith. The members carry the result to the A lodges; and these, by the conditions of their membership, must vote for Smith.
In the case of a state election, bodies each consisting of a number of B lodges would elect a delegate to a state council, and the state council would examine the aggregate vote and give its decision in favor of the Republican or Democratic candidate receiving the majority of the Casting Vote’s suffrages.
In the case of a presidential contest, the state council would appoint delegates to a national convention, and these would examine the aggregate Casting Vote vote and determine and announce the choice of the Casting Vote organizations of the whole country. At the presidential election the A lodges throughout the land would vote for presidential electors of the Party indicated.
If the reader thinks well of the project, let him begin a private canvass among his friends and give it a practical test, without waiting for other people to begin. If in the hands of men who regard their citizenship as a high trust this scheme shall fail upon trial, a better must be sought, a better must be invented; for it cannot be well or safe to let the present political conditions continue indefinitely. They can be improved, and American citizenship should rouse up from its disheartenment and see that it is done.
THE UNITED STATES OF LYNCHERDOM
(1901)
law, and when in 1901 a particularly barbarous incident occurred in his native state he was moved to express himself in print. The article was not offered for publication, perhaps because the moment of timeliness had passed. Its general timeliness, however, is perennial and a word from “America’s foremost private citizen” on the subject is worthy of preservation.--A. B. P.
I
And so Missouri has fallen, that great state! Certain of her children have joined the lynchers, and the smirch is upon the rest of us. That handful of her children have given us a character and labeled us with a name, and to the dwellers in the four quarters of the earth we are “lynchers,” now, and ever shall be. For the world will not stop and think--it never does, it is not its way; its way is to generalize from a single sample. It will not say, “Those Missourians have been busy eighty years in building an honorable good name for themselves; these hundred lynchers down in the corner of the state are not real Missourians, they are renegades.” No, that truth will not enter its mind; it will generalize from the one or two misleading samples and say, “The Missourians are lynchers.” It has no reflection, no logic, no sense of proportion. With it, figures go for nothing; to it, figures reveal nothing, it cannot reason upon them rationally; it would say, for instance, that China is being swiftly and surely Christianized, since nine Chinese Christians are being made every day; and it would fail, with him, to notice that the fact that 33,000 pagans are born there every day, damages the argument. It would say, “There are a hundred lynchers there, therefore the Missourians are lynchers”; the considerable fact that there are two and a half million Missourians who are not lynchers would not affect their verdict.
II
Oh, Missouri!
The tragedy occurred near Pierce City, down in the southwestern corner of the state. On a Sunday afternoon a young white woman who had started alone from church was found murdered. For there are churches there; in my time religion was more general, more pervasive, in the South than it was in the North, and more virile and earnest, too, I think; I have some reason to believe that this is still the case. The young woman was found murdered. Although it was a region of churches and schools the people rose, lynched three negroes--two of them very aged ones--burned out five negro households, and drove thirty negro families into the woods.
I do not dwell upon the provocation which moved the people to these crimes, for that has nothing to do with the matter; the only question is, does the assassin take the law into his own hands? It is very simple, and very just. If the assassin be proved to have usurped the law’s prerogative in righting his wrongs, that ends the matter; a thousand provocations are no defense. The Pierce City people had bitter provocation--indeed, as revealed by certain of the particulars, the bitterest of all provocations--but no matter, they took the law into their own hands, when by the terms of their statutes their victim would certainly hang if the law had been allowed to take its course, for there are but few negroes in that region and they are without authority and without influence in overawing juries.
Why has lynching, with various barbaric accompaniments, become a favorite regulator in cases of “the usual crime” in several parts of the country? Is it because men think a lurid and terrible punishment a more forcible object lesson and a more effective deterrent than a sober and colorless hanging done privately in a jail would be? Surely sane men do not think that. Even the average child should know better. It should know that any strange and much-talked-of event is always followed by imitations, the world being so well supplied with excitable people who only need a little stirring up to make them lose what is left of their heads and do mad things which they would not have thought of ordinarily. It should know that if a man jump off Brooklyn Bridge another will imitate him; that if a person venture down Niagara Whirlpool in a barrel another will imitate him; that if a Jack the Ripper make notoriety by slaughtering women in dark alleys he will be imitated; that if a man attempt a king’s life and the newspapers carry the noise of it around the globe, regicides will crop up all around. The child should know that one much-talked-of outrage and murder committed by a negro will upset the disturbed intellects of several other negroes and produce a series of the very tragedies the community would so strenuously wish to prevent; that each of these crimes will produce another series, and year by year steadily increase the tale of these disasters instead of diminishing it; that, in a word, the lynchers are themselves the worst enemies of their women. The child should also know that by a law of our make, communities, as well as individuals, are imitators; and that a much-talked-of lynching will infallibly produce other lynchings here and there and yonder, and that in time these will breed a mania, a fashion; a fashion which will spread wide and wider, year by year, covering state after state, as with an advancing disease. Lynching has reached Colorado, it has reached California, it has reached Indiana--and now Missouri! I may live to see a negro burned in Union Square, New York, with fifty thousand people present, and not a sheriff visible, not a governor, not a constable, not a colonel, not a clergyman, not a law-and-order representative of any sort.
Increase in Lynching.--In 1900 there were eight more cases than in 1899, and probably this year there will be more than there were last year. The year is little more than half gone, and yet there are eighty-eight cases as compared with one hundred and fifteen for all of last year. The four Southern states, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi are the worst offenders. Last year there were eight cases in Alabama, sixteen in Georgia, twenty in Louisiana, and twenty in Mississippi--over one-half the total. This year to date there have been nine in Alabama, twelve in Georgia, eleven in Louisiana, and thirteen in Mississippi--again more than one-half the total number in the whole United States.--Chicago Tribune.
It must be that the increase comes of the inborn human instinct to imitate--that and man’s commonest weakness, his aversion to being unpleasantly conspicuous, pointed at, shunned, as being on the unpopular side. Its other name is Moral Cowardice, and is the commanding feature of the make-up of 9,999 men in the 10,000. I am not offering this as a discovery; privately the dullest of us knows it to be true. History will not allow us to forget or ignore this supreme trait of our character. It persistently and sardonically reminds us that from the beginning of the world no revolt against a public infamy or oppression has ever been begun but by the one daring man in the 10,000, the rest timidly waiting, and slowly and reluctantly joining, under the influence of that man and his fellows from the other ten thousands. The abolitionists remember. Privately the public feeling was with them early, but each man was afraid to speak out until he got some hint that his neighbor was privately feeling as he privately felt himself. Then the boom followed. It always does. It will occur in New York, some day; and even in Pennsylvania.
It has been supposed--and said--that the people at a lynching enjoy the spectacle and are glad of a chance to see it. It cannot be true; all experience is against it. The people in the South are made like the people in the North--the vast majority of whom are right-hearted and compassionate, and would be cruelly pained by such a spectacle--and would attend it, and let on to be pleased with it, if the public approval seemed to require it. We are made like that, and we cannot help it. The other animals are not so, but we cannot help that, either. They lack the Moral Sense; we have no way of trading ours off, for a nickel or some other thing above its value. The Moral Sense teaches us what is right, and how to avoid it--when unpopular.
It is thought, as I have said, that a lynching crowd enjoys a lynching. It certainly is not true; it is impossible of belief. It is freely asserted--you have seen it in print many times of late--that the lynching impulse has been misinterpreted; that it is not the outcome of a spirit of revenge, but of a “mere atrocious hunger to look upon human suffering.” If that were so, the crowds that saw the Windsor Hotel burn down would have enjoyed the horrors that fell under their eyes. Did they? No one will think that of them, no one will make that charge. Many risked their lives to save the men and women who were in peril. Why did they do that? Because none would disapprove. There was no restraint; they could follow their natural impulse. Why does a crowd of the same kind of people in Texas, Colorado, Indiana, stand by, smitten to the heart and miserable, and by ostentatious outward signs pretend to enjoy a lynching? Why does it lift no hand or voice in protest? Only because it would be unpopular to do it, I think; each man is afraid of his neighbor’s disapproval--a thing which, to the general run of the race, is more dreaded than wounds and death. When there is to be a lynching the people hitch up and come miles to see it, bringing their wives and children. Really to see it? No--they come only because they are afraid to stay at home, lest it be noticed and offensively commented upon. We may believe this, for we all know how we feel about such spectacles--also, how we would act under the like pressure. We are not any better nor any braver than anybody else, and we must not try to creep out of it.
A Savonarola can quell and scatter a mob of lynchers with a mere glance of his eye: so can a Merrill[[7]] or a Beloat.[[8]] For no mob has any sand in the presence of a man known to be splendidly brave. Besides, a lynching mob would like to be scattered, for of a certainty there are never ten men in it who would not prefer to be somewhere else--and would be, if they but had the courage to go. When I was a boy I saw a brave gentleman deride and insult a mob and drive it away; and afterward, in Nevada, I saw a noted desperado make two hundred men sit still, with the house burning under them, until he gave them permission to retire. A plucky man can rob a whole passenger train by himself; and the half of a brave man can hold up a stagecoach and strip its occupants.
Then perhaps the remedy for lynchings comes to this: station a brave man in each affected community to encourage, support, and bring to light the deep disapproval of lynching hidden in the secret places of its heart--for it is there, beyond question. Then those communities will find something better to imitate--of course, being human, they must imitate something. Where shall these brave men be found? That is indeed a difficulty; there are not three hundred of them in the earth. If merely physically brave men would do, then it were easy; they could be furnished by the cargo. When Hobson called for seven volunteers to go with him to what promised to be certain death, four thousand men responded--the whole fleet, in fact. Because all the world would approve. They knew that; but if Hobson’s project had been charged with the scoffs and jeers of the friends and associates, whose good opinion and approval the sailors valued, he could not have got his seven.
No, upon reflection, the scheme will not work. There are not enough morally brave men in stock. We are out of moral-courage material; we are in a condition of profound poverty. We have those two sheriffs down South who--but never mind, it is not enough to go around; they have to stay and take care of their own communities.
But if we only could have three or four more sheriffs of that great breed! Would it help? I think so. For we are all imitators: other brave sheriffs would follow; to be a dauntless sheriff would come to be recognized as the correct and only thing, and the dreaded disapproval would fall to the share of the other kind; courage in this office would become custom, the absence of it a dishonor, just as courage presently replaces the timidity of the new soldier; then the mobs and the lynchings would disappear, and----
However. It can never be done without some starters, and where are we to get the starters? Advertise? Very well, then, let us advertise.
In the meantime, there is another plan. Let us import American missionaries from China, and send them into the lynching field. With 1,511 of them out there converting two Chinamen apiece per annum against an uphill birth rate of 33,000 pagans per day,[[9]] it will take upward of a million years to make the conversions balance the output and bring the Christianizing of the country in sight to the naked eye; therefore, if we can offer our missionaries as rich a field at home at lighter expense and quite satisfactory in the matter of danger, why shouldn’t they find it fair and right to come back and give us a trial? The Chinese are universally conceded to be excellent people, honest, honorable, industrious, trustworthy, kind-hearted, and all that--leave them alone, they are plenty good enough just as they are; and besides, almost every convert runs a risk of catching our civilization. We ought to be careful. We ought to think twice before we encourage a risk like that; for, once civilized, China can never be uncivilized again. We have not been thinking of that. Very well, we ought to think of it now. Our missionaries will find that we have a field for them--and not only for the 1,511, but for 15,011. Let them look at the following telegram and see if they have anything in China that is more appetizing. It is from Texas:
The negro was taken to a tree and swung in the air. Wood and fodder were piled beneath his body and a hot fire was made. Then it was suggested that the man ought not to die too quickly, and he was let down to the ground while a party went to Dexter, about two miles distant, to procure coal oil. This was thrown on the flames and the work completed.
We implore them to come back and help us in our need. Patriotism imposes this duty on them. Our country is worse off than China; they are our countrymen, their motherland supplicates their aid in this her hour of deep distress. They are competent; our people are not. They are used to scoffs, sneers, revilings, danger; our people are not. They have the martyr spirit; nothing but the martyr spirit can brave a lynching mob, and cow it and scatter it. They can save their country, we beseech them to come home and do it. We ask them to read that telegram again, and yet again, and picture the scene in their minds, and soberly ponder it; then multiply it by 115, add 88; place the 203 in a row, allowing 600 feet of space for each human torch, so that there may be viewing room around it for 5,000 Christian American men, women, and children, youths and maidens; make it night, for grim effect; have the show in a gradually rising plain, and let the course of the stakes be uphill; the eye can then take in the whole line of twenty-four miles of blood-and-flesh bonfires unbroken, whereas if it occupied level ground the ends of the line would bend down and be hidden from view by the curvature of the earth. All being ready, now, and the darkness opaque, the stillness impressive--for there should be no sound but the soft moaning of the night wind and the muffled sobbing of the sacrifices--let all the far stretch of kerosened pyres be touched off simultaneously and the glare and the shrieks and the agonies burst heavenward to the Throne.
There are more than a million persons present; the light from the fires flushes into vague outline against the night the spires of five thousand churches. O kind missionary, O compassionate missionary, leave China! come home and convert these Christians!
I believe that if anything can stop this epidemic of bloody insanities it is martial personalities that can face mobs without flinching; and as such personalities are developed only by familiarity with danger and by the training and seasoning which come of resisting it, the likeliest place to find them must be among the missionaries who have been under tuition in China during the past year or two. We have abundance of work for them, and for hundreds and thousands more, and the field is daily growing and spreading. Shall we find them? We can try. In 75,000,000 there must be other Merrills and Beloats; and it is the law of our make that each example shall wake up drowsing chevaliers of the same great knighthood and bring them to the front.
[7]. Sheriff of Carroll County, Georgia.
[8]. Sheriff, Princeton, Indiana. By that formidable power which lies in an established reputation for cold pluck they faced lynching mobs and securely held the field against them.
[9]. These figures are not fanciful; all of them are genuine and authentic. They are from official missionary records in China. See Doctor Morrison’s book on his pedestrian journey across China; he quotes them and gives his authorities. For several years he has been the London Times’s representative in Peking, and was there through the siege.
TO THE PERSON SITTING IN DARKNESS
(North American Review, 1901)
See introduction to this volume for some account of this and the following article.
Christmas will dawn in the United States over a people full of hope and aspiration and good cheer. Such a condition means contentment and happiness. The carping grumbler who may here and there go forth will find few to listen to him. The majority will wonder what is the matter with him and pass on.--New York Tribune, on Christmas Eve.
From the Sun, of New York:
The purpose of this article is not to describe the terrible offenses against humanity committed in the name of Politics in some of the most notorious East Side districts. They could not be described, even verbally. But it is the intention to let the great mass of more or less careless citizens of this beautiful metropolis of the New World get some conception of the havoc and ruin wrought to man, woman, and child in the most densely populated and least-known section of the city. Name, date, and place can be supplied to those of little faith--or to any man who feels himself aggrieved. It is a plain statement of record and observation, written without license and without garnish.
Imagine, if you can, a section of the city territory completely dominated by one man, without whose permission neither legitimate nor illegitimate business can be conducted; where illegitimate business is encouraged and legitimate business discouraged; where the respectable residents have to fasten their doors and windows summer nights and sit in their rooms with asphyxiating air and 100-degree temperature, rather than try to catch the faint whiff of breeze in their natural breathing places, the stoops of their homes; where naked women dance by night in the streets, and unsexed men prowl like vultures through the darkness on “business” not only permitted but encouraged by the police; where the education of infants begins with the knowledge of prostitution and the training of little girls is training in the arts of Phryne; where American girls brought up with the refinements of American homes are imported from small towns up-state, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey, and kept as virtually prisoners as if they were locked up behind jail bars until they have lost all semblance of womanhood; where small boys are taught to solicit for the women of disorderly houses; where there is an organized society of young men whose sole business in life is to corrupt young girls and turn them over to bawdy houses; where men walking with their wives along the street are openly insulted; where children that have adult diseases are the chief patrons of the hospitals and dispensaries; where it is the rule, rather than the exception, that murder, rape, robbery, and theft go unpunished--in short where the Premium of the most awful forms of Vice is the Profit of the politicians.
The following news from China appeared in the Sun, of New York, on Christmas Eve. The italics are mine:
The Rev. Mr. Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions, has returned from a trip which he made for the purpose of collecting indemnities for damages done by Boxers. Everywhere he went he compelled the Chinese to pay. He says that all his native Christians are now provided for. He had 700 of them under his charge, and 300 were killed. He has collected 300 taels for each of these murders, and has compelled full payment for all the property belonging to Christians that was destroyed. He also assessed fines amounting to THIRTEEN TIMES the amount of the indemnity. This money will be used for the propagation of the Gospel.
Mr. Ament declares that the compensation he has collected is moderate when compared with the amount secured by the Catholics, who demand, in addition to money, head for head. They collect 500 taels for each murder of a Catholic. In the Wenchiu country, 680 Catholics were killed, and for this the European Catholics here demand 750,000 strings of cash and 680 heads.
In the course of a conversation, Mr. Ament referred to the attitude of the missionaries toward the Chinese. He said:
“I deny emphatically that the missionaries are vindictive, that they generally looted, or that they have done anything since the siege that the circumstances did not demand. I criticize the Americans. The soft hand of the Americans is not as good as the mailed fist of the Germans. If you deal with the Chinese with a soft hand they will take advantage of it.
“The statement that the French government will return the loot taken by the French soldiers is the source of the greatest amusement here. The French soldiers were more systematic looters than the Germans, and it is a fact that to-day Catholic Christians, carrying French flags and armed with modern guns, are looting villages in the Province of Chili.”
By happy luck, we get all these glad tidings on Christmas Eve--just in time enable us to celebrate the day with proper gayety and enthusiasm. Our spirits soar, and we find we can even make jokes: Taels, I win, Heads you lose.
Our Reverend Ament is the right man in the right place. What we want of our missionaries out there is, not that they shall merely represent in their acts and persons the grace and gentleness and charity and loving-kindness of our religion, but that they shall also represent the American spirit. The oldest Americans are the Pawnees. Macallum’s History says:
When a white Boxer kills a Pawnee and destroys his property, the other Pawnees do not trouble to seek him out, they kill any white person that comes along; also, they make some white village pay deceased’s heirs the full cash value of deceased, together with full cash value of the property destroyed; they also make the village pay, in addition, thirteen times the value of that property into a fund for the dissemination of the Pawnee religion, which they regard as the best of all religions for the softening and humanizing of the heart of man. It is their idea that it is only fair and right that the innocent should be made to suffer for the guilty, and that it is better that ninety and nine innocent should suffer than that one guilty person should escape.
Our Reverend Ament is justifiably jealous of those enterprising Catholics, who not only get big money for each lost convert, but get “head for head” besides. But he should soothe himself with the reflections that the entirety of their exactions are for their own pockets, whereas he, less selfishly, devotes only 300 taels per head to that service, and gives the whole vast thirteen repetitions of the property-indemnity to the service of propagating the Gospel. His magnanimity has won him the approval of his nation, and will get him a monument. Let him be content with these rewards. We all hold him dear for manfully defending his fellow missionaries from exaggerated charges which were beginning to distress us, but which his testimony has so considerably modified that we can now contemplate them without noticeable pain. For now we know that, even before the siege, the missionaries were not “generally” out looting, and that, “since the siege,” they have acted quite handsomely, except when “circumstances” crowded them. I am arranging for the monument. Subscriptions for it can be sent to the American Board; designs for it can be sent to me. Designs must allegorically set forth the Thirteen Reduplications of the Indemnity, and the Object for which they were exacted; as Ornaments, the designs must exhibit 680 Heads, so disposed as to give a pleasing and pretty effect; for the Catholics have done nicely, and are entitled to notice in the monument. Mottoes may be suggested, if any shall be discovered that will satisfactorily cover the ground.
Mr. Ament’s financial feat of squeezing a thirteenfold indemnity out of the pauper peasants to square other people’s offenses, thus condemning them and their women and innocent little children to inevitable starvation and lingering death, in order that the blood money so acquired might be “used for the propagation of the Gospel,” does not flutter my serenity; although the act and the words, taken together, concrete a blasphemy so hideous and so colossal that, without doubt, its mate is not findable in the history of this or of any other age. Yet, if a layman had done that thing and justified it with those words, I should have shuddered, I know. Or, if I had done the thing and said the words myself--However, the thought is unthinkable, irreverent as some imperfectly informed people think me. Sometimes an ordained minister sets out to be blasphemous. When this happens, the layman is out of the running; he stands no chance.
We have Mr. Ament’s impassioned assurance that the missionaries are not “vindictive.” Let us hope and pray that they will never become so, but will remain in the almost morbidly fair and just and gentle temper which is affording so much satisfaction to their brother and champion to-day.
The following is from the New York Tribune of Christmas Eve. It comes from that journal’s Tokyo correspondent. It has a strange and impudent sound, but the Japanese are but partially civilized as yet. When they become wholly civilized they will not talk so:
The missionary question, of course, occupies a foremost place in the discussion. It is now felt as essential that the Western Powers take cognizance of the sentiment here, that religious invasions of Oriental countries by powerful Western organizations are tantamount to filibustering expeditions, and should not only be discountenanced, but that stern measures should be adopted for their suppression. The feeling here is that the missionary organizations constitute a constant menace to peaceful international relations.
Shall we? That is, shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest? Shall we bang right ahead in our old-time, loud, pious way, and commit the new century to the game; or shall we sober up and sit down and think it over first? Would it not be prudent to get our Civilization tools together, and see how much stock is left on hand in the way of Glass Beads and Theology, and Maxim Guns and Hymn Books, and Trade Gin and Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable ones, good to fire villages with, upon occasion), and balance the books, and arrive at the profit and loss, so that we may intelligently decide whether to continue the business or sell out the property and start a new Civilization Scheme on the proceeds?
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 this desirable exhibit to the Gentlemen who Sit in Darkness:
| Love, | Law and Order, |
| Justice, | Liberty, |
| Gentleness, | Equality, |
| Christianity, | Honorable Dealing, |
| Protection to the Weak, | Mercy, |
| Temperance, | 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 Tsar 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; and 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 overshowy 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 Weekly, London, of those days. The same number--and the same column--contained 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, overcompensation 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 Disseminators of Progress and the Blessings of Civilization.
The Kaiser’s[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 can 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 result 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 river 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. Moved 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 Filipino 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:
“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; uncharacteristic; 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. They could not understand 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; intrusted 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 War was what we needed. 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 specters 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 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[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 little, and their rather indiscret 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 gayety into them:
“ADMINISTRATION WEARY OF
PROTRACTED HOSTILITIES!”
“REAL WAR AHEAD FOR FILIPINO
REBELS!”[[10]]
“WILL SHOW NO MERCY!”
“KITCHENER’S PLAN ADOPTED!”
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 in 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 bandits’ 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 90 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 elect 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 worshiped 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 breaths, 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; 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 crossbones.
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.
[10]. “Rebels!” Mumble that funny word--don’t let the Person catch it distinctly.
TO MY MISSIONARY CRITICS
(North American Review, 1901)
I have received many newspaper cuttings; also letters from several clergymen; also a note from the Rev. Dr. Judson Smith, Corresponding Secretary of the American Board of Foreign Missions--all of a like tenor; all saying, substantially, what is said in the cutting here copied:
AN APOLOGY DUE FROM MR. CLEMENS
The evidence of the past day or two should induce Mark Twain to make for the amen corner and formulate a prompt apology for his scathing attack on the Rev. Dr. Ament, the veteran Chinese missionary. The assault was based on a Peking dispatch to the New York Sun, which said that Dr. Ament had collected from the Chinese in various places damages thirteen times in excess of actual losses. So Mark Twain charged Mr. Ament with bullyragging, extortion, and things. A Peking dispatch to the Sun yesterday, however, explains that the amount collected was not thirteen times the damage sustained, but one-third in excess of the indemnities, and that the blunder was due to a cable error in transmission. The 1-3d got converted into 13. Yesterday the Rev. Judson Smith, Secretary of the American Board, received a dispatch from Dr. Ament, calling attention to the cable blunder, and declaring that all the collections which he made were approved by the Chinese officials. The fractional amount that was collected in excess of actual losses, he explains, is being used for the support of widows and orphans.
So collapses completely--and convulsively--Mark Twain’s sensational and ugly bombardment of a missionary whose character and services should have exempted him from such an assault.
From the charge the underpinning has been knocked out. To Dr. Ament Mr. Clemens has done an injustice which is gross but unintentional. If Mark Twain is the man we take him to be he won’t be long in filing a retraction, plus an apology.
I have no prejudice against apologies. I trust I shall never withhold one when it is due; I trust I shall never even have a disposition to do so. These letters and newspaper paragraphs are entitled to my best attention; respect for their writers and for the humane feeling which has prompted their utterances requires this of me. It may be barely possible that, if these requests for an apology had reached me before the 20th of February, I might have had a sort of qualified chance to apologize; but on that day appeared the two little cablegrams referred to in the newspaper cutting copied above--one from the Rev. Dr. Smith to the Rev. Dr. Ament, the other from Dr. Ament to Dr. Smith--and my small chance died then. In my opinion, these cablegrams ought to have been suppressed, for it seems clear that they give Dr. Ament’s case entirely away. Still, that is only an opinion, and may be a mistake. It will be best to examine the case from the beginning, by the light of the documents connected with it.
EXHIBIT A
This is a dispatch from Mr. Chamberlain,[[11]] chief of the Sun’s correspondence staff in Peking. It appeared in the Sun last Christmas Eve, and in referring to it hereafter I will call it the “C. E. dispatch” for short:
The Rev. Mr. Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions, has returned from a trip which he made for the purpose of collecting indemnities for damages done by Boxers. Everywhere he went he compelled the Chinese to pay. He says that all his native Christians are now provided for. He had seven hundred of them under his charge, and three hundred were killed. He has collected 300 taels for each of these murders, and has compelled full payment for all the property belonging to Christians that was destroyed. He also assessed fines amounting to thirteen times[[12]] the amount of the indemnity. This money will be used for the propagation of the Gospel.
Mr. Ament declares that the compensation he has collected is moderate when compared with the amount secured by the Catholics, who demand, in addition to money, head for head. They collect 500 taels for each murder of a Catholic. In the Wen-Chiu country 680 Catholics were killed, and for this the European Catholics here demand 750,000 strings of cash and 680 heads.
In the course of a conversation Mr. Ament referred to the attitude of the missionaries toward the Chinese. He said:
“I[“I] deny emphatically that the missionaries are vindictive, that they generally looted, or that they have done anything since the siege that the circumstances did not demand. I criticize the Americans. The soft hand of the Americans is not as good as the mailed fist of the Germans. If you deal with the Chinese with a soft hand they will take advantage of it.”
In an article addressed “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” published in the North American Review for February, I made some comments upon this C. E. dispatch.
In an Open Letter to me, from the Rev. Dr. Smith, published in the Tribune of February 15th, doubt is cast upon the authenticity of the dispatch.
Up to the 20th of February, this doubt was an important factor in the case: Dr. Ament’s brief cablegram, published on that date, took the importance all out of it.
In the Open Letter, Dr. Smith quotes this passage from a letter from Dr. Ament, dated November 13th. The italics are mine:
This time I proposed to settle affairs without the aid of soldiers or legations.
This cannot mean two things, but only one: that, previously, he had collected by armed force.
Also, in the Open Letter, Dr. Smith quotes some praises of Dr. Ament and the Rev. Mr. Tewksbury, furnished by the Rev. Dr. Sheffield, and says:
Dr. Sheffield is not accustomed to speak thus of thieves, or extortioners, or braggarts.
What can he mean by those vigorous expressions? Can he mean that the first two would be applicable to a missionary who should collect from B, with the “aid of soldiers,” indemnities possibly due by A, and upon occasion go out looting?
EXHIBIT B
Testimony of George Lynch (indorsed as entirely trustworthy by the Tribune and the Herald), war correspondent in the Cuban and South African wars, and in the march upon Peking for the rescue of the legations. The italics are mine:
When the soldiers were prohibited from looting, no such prohibitions seemed to operate with the missionaries. For instance, the Rev. Mr. Tewksbury held a great sale of looted goods, which lasted several days.
A day or two after the relief, when looking for a place to sleep in, I met the Rev. Mr. Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions. He told me he was going to take possession of the house of a wealthy Chinaman who was an old enemy of his, as he had interfered much in the past with his missionary labors in Peking. A couple of days afterwards he did so, and held a great sale of his enemy’s effects. I bought a sable cloak at it for $125, and a couple of statues of Buddha. As the stock became depleted it was replenished by the efforts of his converts, who were ransacking the houses in the neighborhood.--New York Herald, February 18th.
It is Dr. Smith, not I, who has suggested that persons who act in this way are “thieves and extortioners.”
EXHIBIT C
Sir Robert Hart, in the Fortnightly Review for January, 1901. This witness has been for many years the most prominent and important Englishman in China, and bears an irreproachable reputation for moderation, fairness, and truth-speaking. In closing a description of the revolting scenes which followed the occupation of Peking, when the Christian armies (with the proud exception of the American soldiery, let us be thankful for that) gave themselves up to a ruthless orgy of robbery and spoliation, he says (the italics are mine):
And even some missionaries took such a leading part in “spoiling the Egyptians” for the greater glory of God that a bystander was heard to say: “For a century to come Chinese converts will consider looting and vengeance Christian virtues.[virtues.]”
It is Dr. Smith, not I, who has suggested that persons who act in this way are “thieves and extortioners.” According to Mr. Lynch and Mr. Martin (another war correspondent), Dr. Ament helped to spoil several of those Egyptians. Mr. Martin took a photograph of the scene. It was reproduced in the Herald. I have it.
EXHIBIT D
In a brief reply to Dr. Smith’s Open Letter to me, I said this in the Tribune. I am italicizing several words--for a purpose:
Whenever he (Dr. Smith) can produce from the Rev. Mr. Ament an assertion that the Sun’s character-blasting dispatch was not authorized by him, and whenever Dr. Smith can buttress Mr. Ament’s disclaimer with a confession from Mr. Chamberlain, the head of the Laffan News Service in China, that that dispatch was a false invention and unauthorized, the case against Mr. Ament will fall at once to the ground.
EXHIBIT E
Brief cablegrams, referred to above, which passed between Dr. Smith and Dr. Ament, and were published on February 20th:
Ament, Peking: Reported December 24 your collecting thirteen times actual losses; using for propagating the Gospel. Are these statements true? Cable specific answer.
Smith.
Statement untrue. Collected 1-3 for church expenses, additional actual damages; now supporting widows and orphans. Publication thirteen times blunder cable. All collections received approval Chinese officials, who are urging further settlements same line.
Ament.
Only two questions are asked; “specific” answers required; no perilous wanderings among the other details of the unhappy dispatch desired.
EXHIBIT F
Letter from Dr. Smith to me, dated March 8th. The italics are mine; they tag inaccuracies of statement:
Permit me to call your attention to the marked paragraphs in the inclosed papers, and to ask you to note their relation to the two conditions named in your letter to the New York Tribune of February 15th.
The first is Dr. Ament’s denial of the truth of the dispatch in the New York “Sun,” of December 24th, on which your criticisms of him in the North American Review of February were founded. The second is a correction by the “Sun’s” special correspondent in Peking of the dispatch printed in the Sun of December 24th.
Since, as you state in your letter to the Tribune, “the case against Mr. Ament would fall to the ground” if Mr. Ament denied the truth of the Sun’s first dispatch, and if the ‘Sun’s’ news agency in Peking also declared that dispatch false, and these two conditions have thus been fulfilled, I am sure that upon having these facts brought to your attention you will gladly withdraw the criticisms that were founded on a “cable blunder.”
I think Dr. Smith ought to read me more carefully; then he would not make so many mistakes. Within the narrow space of two paragraphs, totaling eleven lines, he has scored nine departures from fact out of a possible 9½. Now, is that parliamentary? I do not treat him like that. Whenever I quote him, I am particular not to do him the least wrong, or make him say anything he did not say.
(1) Mr. Ament doesn’t “deny the truth of the C. E. dispatch”; he merely changes one of its phrases, without materially changing the meaning, and (immaterially) corrects a cable blunder (which correction I accept). He was asked no question about the other four fifths of the C. E. dispatch. (2) I said nothing about “special” correspondents; I named the right and responsible man--Mr. Chamberlain. The “correction” referred to is a repetition of the one I have just accepted, which (immaterially) changes “thirteen times” to “one third” extra tax. (3) I did not say anything about “the Sun’s news agency”; I said “Chamberlain.” I have every confidence in Mr. Chamberlain, but I am not personally acquainted with the others. (4) Once more--Mr. Ament didn’t “deny the truth” of the C. E. dispatch, but merely made unimportant emendations of a couple of its many details. (5) I did not say “if Mr. Ament denied the truth” of the C. E. dispatch: I said, if he would assert that the dispatch was not “authorized” by him. For example, I did not suppose that the charge that the Catholic missionaries wanted 680 Chinamen beheaded was true; but I did want to know if Dr. Ament personally authorized that statement and the others, as coming from his lips. Another detail: one of my conditions was that Mr. Chamberlain must not stop with confessing that the C. E. was a “false invention,” he must also confess that it was “unauthorized.” Dr. Smith has left out that large detail. (6) The Sun’s news agency did not “declare the C. E. dispatch false,” but confined itself to correcting one unimportant detail of its long list--the change of “13 times” to “one third” extra. (7) The “two conditions” have not “been fulfilled”--far from it. (8) Those details labeled “facts” are only fancies. (9) Finally, my criticisms were by no means confined to that detail of the C. E. dispatch which we now accept as having been a “cable blunder.”
Setting to one side these nine departures from fact, I find that what is left of the eleven lines is straight and true. I am not blaming Dr. Smith for these discrepancies--it would not be right, it would not be fair. I make the proper allowances. He has not been a journalist, as I have been--a trade wherein a person is brought to book by the rest of the press so often for divergencies that, by and by, he gets to be almost morbidly afraid to indulge in them. It is so with me. I always have the disposition to tell what is not so; I was born with it; we all have it. But I try not to do it now, because I have found out that it is unsafe. But with the Doctor of course it is different.
EXHIBIT G
I wanted to get at the whole of the facts as regards the C. E. dispatch, and so I wrote to China for them, when I found that the Board was not going to do it. But I am not allowed to wait. It seemed quite within the possibilities that a full detail of the facts might furnish me a chance to make an apology to Mr. Ament--a chance which, I give you my word, I would have honestly used, and not abused. But it is no matter. If the Board is not troubled about the bulk of that lurid dispatch, why should I be? I answered the apology-urging letters of several clergymen with the information that I had written to China for the details, and said I thought it was the only sure way of getting into a position to do fair and full justice to all concerned; but a couple of them replied that it was not a matter that could wait. That is to say, groping your way out of a jungle in the dark with guesses and conjectures is better than a straight march out in the sunlight of fact. It seems a curious idea.
However, those two clergymen were in a large measure right--from their point of view and the Board’s; which is, putting it in the form of a couple of questions:
1. Did Dr. Ament collect the assessed damages and thirteen times over? The answer is: He did not. He collected only a third over.
2. Did he apply the third to the “propagation of the Gospel?” The answer is this correction: He applied it to “church expenses.” Part or all of the outlay, it appears, goes to “supporting widows and orphans.” It may be that church expenses and supporting widows and orphans are not part of the machinery for propagating the Gospel. I supposed they were, but it isn’t any matter; I prefer this phrasing; it is not so blunt as the other.
In the opinion of the two clergymen and of the Board, these two points are the only important ones in the whole C. E. dispatch.
I accept that. Therefore let us throw out the rest of the dispatch as being no longer a part of Dr. Ament’s case.
EXHIBIT H
The two clergymen and the Board are quite content with Dr. Ament’s answers upon the two points.
Upon the first point of the two, my own viewpoint may be indicated by a question:
Did Dr. Ament collect from B (whether by compulsion or simple demand) even so much as a penny in payment for murders or depredations, without knowing, beyond question, that B, and not another, committed the murders or the depredations?
Or, in other words:
Did Dr. Ament ever, by chance or through ignorance, make the innocent pay the debts of the guilty?
In the article entitled “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” I put forward that point in a paragraph taken from Macallum’s (imaginary) “History”:
EXHIBIT I
When a white Boxer kills a Pawnee and destroys his property the other Pawnees do not trouble to seek him out; they kill any white person that comes along; also, they make some white village pay deceased’s heirs the full cash value of deceased, together with full cash value of the property destroyed; they also make the village pay, in addition, thirteen times[[13]] the value of that property into a fund for the dissemination of the Pawnee religion, which they regard as the best of all religions for the softening and humanizing of the heart of man. It is their idea that it is only fair and right that the innocent should be made to suffer for the guilty, and that it is better that 90 and 9 innocent should suffer than that one guilty person should escape.
We all know that Dr. Ament did not bring suspected persons into a duly organized court and try them by just and fair Christian and civilized methods, but proclaimed his “conditions,” and collected damages from the innocent and the guilty alike, without any court proceedings at all.[[14]] That he himself, and not the villagers, made the “conditions,” we learn from his letter of November 13th, already quoted from--the one in which he remarked that, upon that occasion he brought no soldiers with him. The italics are mine:
After our conditions were known many villagers came of their own accord and brought their money with them.
Not all, but “many.” The Board really believes that those hunted and harried paupers out there were not only willing to strip themselves to pay Boxer damages, whether they owed them or not, but were sentimentally eager to do it. Mr. Ament says, in his letter: “The villagers were extremely grateful because I brought no foreign soldiers, and were glad to settle on the terms proposed.” Some of those people know more about theology than they do about human nature. I do not remember encountering even a Christian who was “glad” to pay money he did not owe; and as for a Chinaman doing it, why, dear me, the thing is unthinkable. We have all seen Chinamen, many Chinamen, but not that kind. It is a new kind: an invention of the Board--and “soldiers.”
CONCERNING THE COLLECTIONS
What was the “one third extra”? Money due? No. Was it a theft, then? Putting aside the “one third extra,” what was the remainder of the exacted indemnity, if collected from persons not known to owe it, and without Christian and civilized forms of procedure? Was it theft, was it robbery? In America it would be that; in Christian Europe it would be that. I have great confidence in Dr. Smith’s judgment concerning this detail, and he calls it “theft and extortion”--even in China; for he was talking about the “thirteen times” at the time that he gave it that strong name.[[15]] It is his idea that, when you make guilty and innocent villagers pay the appraised damages, and then make them pay thirteen times that, besides, the thirteen stand for “theft and extortion.”
Then what does one third extra stand for? Will he give that one third a name? Is it Modified Theft and Extortion? Is that it? The girl who was rebuked for having borne an illegitimate child excused herself by saying, “But it is such a little one.”
When the “thirteen-times-extra” was alleged, it stood for theft and extortion, in Dr. Smith’s eyes, and he was shocked. But when Dr. Ament showed that he had taken only a third extra, instead of thirteenfold, Dr. Smith was relieved, content, happy. I declare I cannot imagine why. That editor--quoted at the head of this article--was happy about it, too. I cannot think why. He thought I ought to “make for the amen corner and formulate a prompt apology.” To whom, and for what? It is too deep for me.
To Dr. Smith, the “thirteenfold extra” clearly stood for “theft and extortion,” and he was right, distinctly right, indisputably right. He manifestly thinks that when it got scaled away down to a mere “one third,” a little thing like that was something other than “theft and extortion.” Why? Only the Board knows! I will try to explain this difficult problem, so that the Board can get an idea of it. If a pauper owes me a dollar, and I catch him unprotected and make him pay me fourteen dollars, thirteen of it is “theft and extortion”; if I make him pay only a dollar and thirty-three and a third cents the thirty-three and a third cents are “theft and extortion” just the same. I will put it in another way, still simpler. If a man owes me one dog--any kind of a dog, the breed is of no consequence--and I----But let it go; the Board would never understand it. It can’t understand these involved and difficult things.
But if the Board could understand, then I could furnish some more instruction--which is this. The one third, obtained by “theft and extortion,” is tainted money, and cannot be purified even by defraying “church expenses” and “supporting widows and orphans” with it. It has to be restored to the people it was taken from.
Also, there is another view of these things. By our Christian code of morals and law, the whole $1.33 1-3, if taken from a man not formally proven to have committed the damage the dollar represents, is “theft and extortion.” It cannot be honestly used for any purpose at all. It must be handed back to the man it was taken from.
Is there no way, then, to justify these thefts and extortions and make them clean and fair and honorable? Yes, there is. It can be done; it has been done; it continues to be done--by revising the Ten Commandments and bringing them down to date: for use in pagan lands. For example:
Thou shalt not steal--except when it is the custom of the country.
This way out is recognized and approved by all the best authorities, including the Board. I will cite witnesses.
The newspaper cutting, above: “Dr. Ament declares that all the collections which he made were approved by the Chinese officials.” The editor is satisfied.
Dr. Ament’s cable to Dr. Smith: “All collections received approval Chinese officials.” Dr. Ament is satisfied.
Letters from eight clergymen--all to the same effect: Dr. Ament merely did as the Chinese do. So they are satisfied.
Mr. Ward, of the “Independent.”
The Rev. Dr. Washington Gladden.
I have mislaid the letters of these gentlemen and cannot quote their words, but they are of the satisfied.
The Rev. Dr. Smith, in his Open Letter, published in the Tribune: “The whole procedure [Dr. Ament’s] is in accordance with a custom among the Chinese, of holding a village responsible for wrongs suffered in that village, and especially making the head man of the village accountable for wrongs committed there.” Dr. Smith is satisfied. Which means that the Board is satisfied.
The “head man”! Why, then, this poor rascal, innocent or guilty, must pay the whole bill, if he cannot squeeze it out of his poor-devil neighbors. But, indeed, he can be depended upon to try, even to the skinning them of their last brass farthing, their last rag of clothing, their last ounce of food. He can be depended upon to get the indemnity out of them, though it cost stripes and blows, blood-tears, and flesh.
THE TALE OF THE KING AND HIS TREASURER
How strange and remote and romantic and Oriental and Arabian-Nighty it all seems--and is. It brings back the old forgotten tales, and we hear the King say to his Treasurer:
“Bring me 30,000 gold tomauns.”
“Allah preserve us, Sire! the treasury is empty.”
“Do you hear? Bring the money--in ten days. Else, send me your head in a basket.”
“I hear and obey.”
The Treasurer summons the head men of a hundred villages, and says to one:
“Bring me a hundred gold tomauns.” To another, “Bring me five hundred.” To another, “Bring a thousand. In ten days. Your head is the forfeit.”
“Your slaves kiss your feet! Ah, high and mighty lord, be merciful to our hard-pressed villagers; they are poor, they are naked, they starve; oh, these impossible sums! even the half----”
“Go! Grind it out of them, crush it out of them, turn the blood of the fathers, the tears of the mothers, the milk of the babes to money--or take the consequences. Have you heard?”
“His will be done, Who is the Fount of love and mercy and compassion, Who layeth this heavy burden upon us by the hand of His anointed servants--blessed be His holy Name! The father shall bleed, the mother shall faint for hunger, the babe shall perish at the dry breast. The chosen of God have commanded: it shall be as they say.”
I am not meaning to object to the substitution of pagan customs for Christian, here and there and now and then, when the Christian ones are inconvenient. No; I like it and admire it. I do it myself. And I admire the alertness of the Board in watching out for chances to trade Board morals for Chinese morals, and get the best of the swap; for I cannot endure those people, they are yellow, and I have never considered yellow becoming. I have always been like the Board--perfectly well-meaning, but destitute of the Moral Sense. Now, one of the main reasons why it is so hard to make the Board understand that there is no moral difference between a big filch and a little filch, but only a legal one, is that vacancy in its make-up. Morally, there are no degrees in stealing. The Commandment merely says, “Thou shalt not steal,” and stops there. It doesn’t recognize any difference between stealing a third and stealing thirteenfold. If I could think of a way to put it before the Board in such a plain and--
THE WATERMELONS
I have it, now. Many years ago, when I was studying for the gallows, I had a dear comrade, a youth who was not in my line, but still a thoroughly good fellow, though devious. He was preparing to qualify for a place on the Board, for there was going to be a vacancy by superannuation in about five years. This was down South, in the slavery days. It was the nature of the negro then, as now, to steal watermelons. They stole three of the melons of an adoptive brother of mine, the only good ones he had. I suspected three of a neighbor’s negroes, but there was no proof: and, besides, the watermelons in those negroes’ private patches were all green and small, and not up to indemnity standard. But in the private patches of three other negroes there were a number of competent melons. I consulted with my comrade, the understudy of the Board. He said that if I would approve his arrangements, he would arrange. I said, “Consider me the Board; I approve: arrange.” So he took a gun, and went and collected three large melons for my brother-on-the-half-shell, and one over. I was greatly pleased, and asked:
“Who gets the extra one?”
“Widows and orphans.”
“A good idea, too. Why didn’t you take thirteen?”
“It would have been wrong; a crime, in fact--Theft and Extortion.”
“What is the one third extra--the odd melon--the same?”
It caused him to reflect. But there was no result.
The justice of the peace was a stern man. On the trial, he found fault with the scheme, and required us to explain upon what we based our strange conduct--as he called it. The understudy said:
“On the custom of the niggers. They all do it.”
The justice forgot his dignity, and descended to sarcasm:
“Custom of the niggers! Are our morals so inadequate that we have to borrow of niggers?” Then he said to the jury: “Three melons were owing; they were collected from persons not proven to owe them; this is theft. They were collected by compulsion; this is extortion. A melon was added--for the widows and orphans. It was owed by no one. It is another theft, another extortion. Return it whence it came, with the others. It is not permissible, here, to apply to any object goods dishonestly obtained--not even to the feeding of widows and orphans, for that would be to put a shame upon charity and dishonor it.”
He said it in open court, before everybody, and to me it did not seem very kind.
A clergyman, in a letter to me, reminds me, with a touch of reproach, that “many of the missionaries are good men, kind-hearted, earnest, devoted to their work.” Certainly they are. No one is disputing it. Instead of “many,” he could have said “almost all,” and still said the truth, no doubt. I know many missionaries; I have met them all about the globe, and have known only one or two who could not fill that bill and answer to that description. “Almost all” comes near to being a proportion and a description applicable also to lawyers, authors, editors, merchants, manufacturers--in fact, to most guilds and vocations. Without a doubt, Dr. Ament did what he believed to be right, and I concede that when a man is doing what he believes to be right, there is argument on his side. I differ with Dr. Ament, but that is only because he got his training from the Board and I got mine outside. Neither of us is responsible, altogether.
RECAPITULATION
But there is no need to sum up. Mr. Ament has acknowledged the “one third extra”--no other witness is necessary. The Rev. Dr. Smith has carefully considered the act and labeled it with a stern name, and his verdict seems to have no flaw in it. The morals of the act are Chinese, but are approved by the Board, and by some of the clergy and some of the newspapers, as being a valuable improvement upon Christian ones--which leaves me with a closed mouth, though with a pain in my heart.
IS THE AMERICAN BOARD ON TRIAL?
Do I think that Dr. Ament and certain of his fellow missionaries are as bad as their conduct? No, I do not. They are the product of their training; and now that I understand the whole case, and where they got their ideals, and that they are merely subordinates and subject to authority, I comprehend that they are rather accessories than principals, and that their acts only show faulty heads curiously trained, not bad hearts. Mainly, as it seems to me, it is the American Board that is on trial. And again, it is a case of the head, not of the heart. That it has a heart which has never harbored an evil intention, no one will deny, no one will question; the Board’s history can silence any challenge on that score. The Board’s heart is not in court: it is its head that is on trial.
It is a sufficiently strange head. Its ways baffle comprehension; its ideas are like no one else’s; its methods are novelties to the practical world; its judgments are surprises. When one thinks it is going to speak and must speak, it is silent; when one thinks it ought to be silent and must be silent, it speaks. Put your finger where you think it ought to be, it is not there; put it where you think it ought not to be, there you find it.
When its servant in China seemed to be charging himself with amazing things, in a reputable journal--in a dispatch which was copied into many other papers--the Board was as silent about it as any dead man could have been who was informed that his house was burning over his head. An exchange of cablegrams could have enabled it, within two days, to prove to the world--possibly--that the damaging dispatch had not proceeded from the mouth of its servant; yet it sat silent and asked no questions about the matter.
It was silent during thirty-eight days. Then the dispatch came into prominence again. It chanced that I was the occasion of it. A break in the stillness followed. In what form? An exchange of cablegrams, resulting in proof that the damaging dispatch had not been authorized? No, in the form of an Open Letter by the Corresponding Secretary of the American Board, the Rev. Dr. Smith, in which it was argued that Dr. Ament could not have said and done the things set forth in the dispatch.
Surely, this was bad politics. A repudiating telegram would have been worth more than a library of argument.
An extension of the silence would have been better than the Open Letter, I think. I thought so at the time. It seemed to me that mistakes enough had been made and harm enough done. I thought it questionable policy to publish the Letter, for I “did not think it likely that Dr. Ament would disown the dispatch,” and I telegraphed that to the Rev. Dr. Smith. Personally, I had nothing against Dr. Ament, and that is my attitude yet.
Once more it was a good time for an extension of the silence. But no; the Board has its own ways, and one of them is to do the unwise thing, when occasion offers. After having waited fifty-six days, it cabled to Dr. Ament. No one can divine why it did so then, instead of fifty-six days earlier.[[16]] It got a fatal reply--and was not aware of it. That was that curious confession about the “one third extra”; its application, not to the “propagation of the Gospel,” but only to “church expenses,” support of widows and orphans; and, on top of this confession, that other strange one revealing the dizzying fact that our missionaries, who went to China to teach Christian morals and justice, had adopted pagan morals and justice in their place. That cablegram was dynamite.
It seems odd that the Board did not see that that revelation made the case far worse than it was before; for there was a saving doubt, before--a doubt which was a Gibraltar for strength, and should have been carefully left undisturbed. Why did the Board allow that revelation to get into print? Why did the Board not suppress it and keep still? But no; in the Board’s opinion, this was once more the time for speech. Hence Dr. Smith’s latest letter to me, suggesting that I speak also--a letter which is a good enough letter, barring its nine defects, but is another evidence that the Board’s head is not as good as its heart.
A missionary is a man who is pretty nearly all heart, else he would not be in a calling which requires of him such large sacrifices of one kind and another. He is made up of faith, zeal, courage, sentiment, emotion, enthusiasm; and so he is a mixture of poet, devotee, and knight errant. He exiles himself from home and friends and the scenes and associations that are dearest to him; patiently endures discomforts, privations, discouragements; goes with good pluck into dangers which he knows may cost him his life; and when he must suffer death, willingly makes that supreme sacrifice for his cause.
Sometimes the headpiece of that kind of a man can be of an inferior sort, and error of judgment can result--as we have seen. Then, for his protection, as it seems to me, he ought to have at his back a Board able to know a blunder when it sees one, and prompt to bring him back upon his right course when he strays from it. That is to say, I think the captain of a ship ought to understand navigation. Whether he does or not, he will have to take a captain’s share of the blame, if the crew bring the vessel to grief.
[11]. Testimony of the manager of the Sun.
[12]. Cable error. For “thirteen times” read “one third.” This correction was made by Dr. Ament in his brief cablegram published February 20th, previously referred to.
[13]. For “thirteen times” read “one third.”--M. T.
[14]. In civilized countries, if a mob destroy property in a town, the damage is paid out of the town treasury, and no taxpayer suffers a disproportionate share of the burden; the mayor is not privileged to distribute the burden according to his private notions, sparing himself and his friends, and fleecing persons he holds a spite against--as in the Orient--and the citizen who is too poor to be a taxpayer pays no part of the fine at all.
[15]. In his Open Letter, Dr. Smith cites Dr. Ament’s letter of November 13th, which contains an account of Dr. Ament’s collecting tour; then Dr. Smith makes this comment: “Nothing is said of securing ‘thirteen times’ the amount of the losses.” Farther down, Dr. Smith quotes praises of Dr. Ament and his work (from a letter of the Rev. Dr. Sheffield), and adds this comment: “Dr. Sheffield is not accustomed to speak thus in praise of thieves, or extortioners, or braggarts.” The reference is to the “thirteen-times” extra tax.
[16]. The cablegram went on the day (February 18th) that Mr. George Lynch’s account of the looting was published. See “Exhibit B.” It seems a pity it did not inquire about the looting and get it denied.