Among the completed manuscripts of the early part of 1902 was a North
American Review article (published in April)--“Does the Race of Man
Love a Lord?”--a most interesting treatise on snobbery as a universal
weakness. There were also some papers on the Philippine situation. In
one of these Clemens wrote:
We have bought some islands from a party who did not own them; with
real smartness and a good counterfeit of disinterested friendliness
we coaxed a confiding weak nation into a trap and closed it upon
them; we went back on an honored guest of the Stars and Stripes when
we had no further use for him and chased him to the mountains; we
are as indisputably in possession of a wide-spreading archipelago as
if it were our property; we have pacified some thousands of the
islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their
villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors;
furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable
patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent
Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have
acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves
of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our
protecting flag over that swag.
And so, by these Providences of God--the phrase is the government's,
not mine--we are a World Power; and are glad and proud, and have a
back seat in the family. With tacks in it. At least we are letting
on to be glad and proud; it is the best way. Indeed, it is the only
way. We must maintain our dignity, for people are looking. We are
a World Power; we cannot get out of it now, and we must make the
best of it.
And again he wrote:
I am not finding fault with this use of our flag, for in order not
to seem eccentric I have swung around now and joined the nation in
the conviction that nothing can sully a flag. I was not properly
reared, and had the illusion that a flag was a thing which must be
sacredly guarded against shameful uses and unclean contacts lest it
suffer pollution; and so when it was sent out to the Philippines to
float over a wanton war and a robbing expedition I supposed it was
polluted, and in an ignorant moment I said so. But I stand
corrected. I concede and acknowledge that it was only the
government that sent it on such an errand that was polluted. Let us
compromise on that. I am glad to have it that way. For our flag
could not well stand pollution, never having been used to it, but it
is different with the administration.
But a much more conspicuous comment on the Philippine policy was the
so-called “Defense of General Funston” for what Funston himself referred
to as a “dirty Irish trick”; that is to say, deception in the capture of
Aguinaldo. Clemens, who found it hard enough to reconcile himself
to-any form of warfare, was especially bitter concerning this particular
campaign. The article appeared in the North American Review for May,
1902, and stirred up a good deal of a storm. He wrote much more on the
subject--very much more--but it is still unpublished.