Title: To the Person Sitting in Darkness
Author: Twain, Mark
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" ***


produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)



                   TO THE PERSON SITTING IN DARKNESS


                                   BY

                               MARK TWAIN

 REPRINTED BY PERMISSION FROM THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, FEBRUARY, 1901



                   TO THE PERSON SITTING IN DARKNESS.

BY MARK TWAIN.


Extending the Blessings of Civilization to our Brother who Sits in
Darkness has been a good trade and has paid well, on the whole; and
there is money in it yet, if carefully worked—but not enough, in my
judgment, to make any considerable risk advisable. The People that Sit
in Darkness are getting to be too scarce—too scarce and too shy. And
such darkness as is now left is really of but an indifferent quality,
and not dark enough for the game. The most of those People that Sit in
Darkness have been furnished with more light than was good for them or
profitable for us. We have been injudicious.

The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered,
is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty
and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is
played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and
must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get
every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the People who Sit in
Darkness have noticed it—they have noticed it, and have begun to show
alarm. They have become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization.
More—they have begun to examine them. This is not well. The Blessings of
Civilization are all right, and a good commercial property; there could
not be a better, in a dim light. In the right kind of a light, and at a
proper distance, with the goods a little out of focus, they furnish this
desirable exhibit to the Gentlemen who Sit in Darkness:

LOVE, JUSTICE, GENTLENESS, CHRISTIANITY, PROTECTION TO THE WEAK,
TEMPERANCE, LAW AND ORDER, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, HONORABLE DEALING, MERCY,
EDUCATION,

—and so on.

There. Is it good? Sir, it is pie. It will bring into camp any idiot
that sits in darkness anywhere. But not if we adulterate it. It is
proper to be emphatic upon that point. This brand is strictly for
Export—apparently. Apparently. Privately and confidentially, it is
nothing of the kind. Privately and confidentially, it is merely an
outside cover, gay and pretty and attractive, displaying the special
patterns of our Civilization which we reserve for Home Consumption,
while inside the bale is the Actual Thing that the Customer Sitting in
Darkness buys with his blood and tears and land and liberty. That Actual
Thing is, indeed, Civilization, but it is only for Export. Is there a
difference between the two brands? In some of the details, yes.

We all know that the Business is being ruined. The reason is not far to
seek. It is because our Mr. McKinley, and Mr. Chamberlain, and the
Kaiser, and the Czar, and the French have been exporting the Actual
Thing with the outside cover left off. This is bad for the Game. It
shows that these new players of it are not sufficiently acquainted with
it.

It is a distress to look on and note the mismoves, they are so strange
and so awkward. Mr. Chamberlain manufactures a war out of materials so
inadequate and so fanciful that they make the boxes grieve and the
gallery laugh, and he tries hard to persuade himself that it isn’t
purely a private raid for cash, but has a sort of dim, vague
respectability about it somewhere, if he could only find the spot; 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 over-showy onslaught of an
elephant upon a nest of field-mice, on the pretext that the mice had
squeaked an insolence at him—conduct which ‘no self-respecting
government could allow to pass unavenged?’ as Mr. Chamberlain said. Was
that a good pretext in a small case, when it had not been a good pretext
in a large one?—for only recently Russia had affronted the elephant
three times and survived alive and unsmitten. Is this Civilization and
Progress? Is it something better than we already possess? These
harryings and burnings and desert-makings in the Transvaal—is this an
improvement on our darkness? Is it, perhaps, possible that there are two
kinds of Civilization—one for home consumption and one for the heathen
market?”

Then They that Sit in Darkness are troubled, and shake their heads; and
they read this extract from a letter of a British private, recounting
his exploits in one of Methuen’s victories, some days before the affair
of Magersfontein, and they are troubled again:

  “We tore up the hill and into the intrenchments, and the Boers saw
  we had them; so they dropped their guns and went down on their knees
  and put up their hands clasped, and begged for mercy. And we gave it
  them—_with the long spoon_.”

The long spoon is the bayonet. See _Lloyd’s Weekly_, London, of those
days. The same number—and the same column—contains some quite
unconscious satire in the form of shocked and bitter upbraidings of the
Boers for their brutalities and inhumanities!

Next to our heavy damage, the Kaiser went to playing the game without
first mastering it. He lost a couple of missionaries in a riot in
Shantung, and in his account he made an overcharge for them. China had
to pay a hundred thousand dollars apiece for them, in money; twelve
miles of territory, containing several millions of inhabitants and worth
twenty million dollars, and to build a monument and also a Christian
Church; whereas the people of China could have been depended upon to
remember the missionaries without the help of these expensive memorials.
This was all bad play. Bad, because it would not, and could not, and
will not now or ever, deceive the Person Sitting in Darkness. He knows
that it was an overcharge. He knows that a missionary is like any other
man; he is worth merely what you can supply his place for, and no more.
He is useful, but so is a doctor, so is a sheriff, so is an editor; but
a just Emperor does not charge war-prices for such. A diligent,
intelligent, but obscure missionary, and a diligent, intelligent country
editor are worth much, and we know it; but they are not worth the earth.
We esteem such an editor, and we are sorry to see him go; but, when he
goes, we should consider twelve miles of territory, and a church, and a
fortune, over-compensation for his loss. I mean, if he was a Chinese
editor, and we had to settle for him. It is no proper figure for an
editor or a missionary; one can get shop-worn kings for less. It was bad
play on the Kaiser’s part. It got this property, true; but it _produced
the Chinese revolt_, the indignant uprising of China’s traduced
patriots, the Boxers. The results have been expensive to Germany, and to
the other Disseminators of Progress and the Blessings of Civilization.

The Kaiser’s claim was paid, yet it was bad play, for it could not fail
to have an evil effect upon Persons Sitting in Darkness in China. They
would muse upon the event, and be likely to say: “Civilization is
gracious and beautiful, for such is its reputation; but can we afford
it? There are rich Chinamen, perhaps they could afford it; but this tax
is not laid upon them, it is laid upon the peasants of Shantung; it is
they that must pay this mighty sum, and their wages are but four cents a
day. Is this a better civilization than ours, and holier and higher and
nobler? Is not this rapacity? Is not this extortion? Would Germany
charge America two hundred thousand dollars for two missionaries, and
shake the mailed fist in her face, and send warships, and send soldiers,
and say: ‘Seize twelve miles of territory, worth twenty millions of
dollars, as additional pay for the missionaries; and make those peasants
build a monument to the missionaries, and a costly Christian church to
remember them by?’ And later would Germany say to her soldiers: ‘March
through America and slay, _giving no quarter_; make the German face
there, as has been our Hun-face here, a terror for a thousand years;
march through the Great Republic and slay, slay, slay, carving a road
for our offended religion through its heart and bowels?’ Would Germany
do like this to America, to England, to France, to Russia? Or only to
China the helpless—imitating the elephant’s assault upon the field-mice?
Had we better invest in this Civilization—this Civilization which called
Napoleon a buccaneer for carrying off Venice’s bronze horses, but which
steals our ancient astronomical instruments from our walls, and goes
looting like common bandits—that is, all the alien soldiers except
America’s; and (Americans again excepted) storms frightened villages and
cables the 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 rivers with the swollen corpses of
countless massacred peasants—that astonished Person still observing and
noting. And perhaps he is saying to himself: “It is yet _another_
Civilized Power, with its banner of the Prince of Peace in one hand and
its loot-basket and its butcher-knife in the other. Is there no
salvation for us but to adopt Civilization and lift ourselves down to
its level?”

And by and by comes America, and our Master of the Game plays it
badly—plays it as Mr. Chamberlain was playing it in South Africa. It was
a mistake to do that; also, it was one which was quite unlooked for in a
Master who was playing it so well in Cuba. In Cuba, he was playing the
usual and regular _American_ game, and it was winning, for there is no
way to beat it. The Master, contemplating Cuba, said: “Here is an
oppressed and friendless little nation which is willing to fight to be
free; we go partners, and put up the strength of seventy million
sympathizers, and the resources of the United States: play!” Nothing but
Europe combined could call that hand: and Europe cannot combine on
anything. There, in Cuba, he was following our great traditions in a way
which made us very proud of him, and proud of the deep dissatisfaction
which his play was provoking in Continental Europe. 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; un-characteristic; foreign to
our established traditions. And this was natural, too; for we were only
playing the American Game in public—in private it was the European. It
was neatly done, very neatly, and it bewildered them so they could not
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; entrusted our Spanish prisoners to their
humane and honest hands; fought shoulder to shoulder with them against
“the common enemy” (our own phrase); praised their courage, praised
their gallantry, praised their mercifulness, praised their fine and
honorable conduct; borrowed their trenches, borrowed strong positions
which they had previously captured from the Spaniards; petted them, lied
to them—officially proclaiming that our land and naval forces came to
give them their freedom and displace the bad Spanish Government—fooled
them, used them until we needed them no longer; then derided the sucked
orange and threw it away. We kept the positions which we had beguiled
them of; by and by, we moved a force forward and overlapped patriot
ground—a clever thought, for we needed trouble, and this would produce
it. A Filipino soldier, crossing the ground, where no one had a right to
forbid him, was shot by our sentry. The badgered patriots resented this
with arms, without waiting to know whether Aguinaldo, who was absent,
would approve or not. Aguinaldo did not approve; but that availed
nothing. What we wanted, in the interest of Progress and Civilization,
was the Archipelago, unencumbered by patriots struggling for
independence; and the War was what we 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 spectres from Spain! [It is quite safe to confess
this to the Person Sitting in Darkness, since neither he nor any other
sane person will believe it.] In buying those ghosts for twenty
millions, we also contracted to take care of the friars and their
accumulations. I think we also agreed to propagate leprosy and smallpox,
but as to this there is doubt. But it is not important; persons
afflicted with the friars do not mind the other diseases.

“With our treaty ratified, Manila subdued, and our Ghosts secured, we
had no further use for Aguinaldo and the owners of the Archipelago. We
forced a war, and we have been hunting America’s guest and ally through
the woods and swamps ever since.”

At this point in the tale, it will be well to boast a little of our
war-work and our heroisms in the field, so as to make our performance
look as fine as England’s in South Africa; but I believe it will not be
best to emphasize this too much. We must be cautious. Of course, we must
read the war-telegrams to the Person, in order to keep up our frankness;
but we can throw an air of humorousness over them, and that will modify
their grim eloquence a little, and their rather indiscreet exhibitions
of gory exultation. Before reading to him the following display heads of
the dispatches of November 18, 1900, it will be well to practice on them
in private first, so as to get the right tang of lightness and gaiety
into them:

           “ADMINISTRATION WEARY OF PROTRACTED HOSTILITIES!”

                “REAL WAR AHEAD FOR FILIPINO REBELS!”[1]

                         “WILL SHOW NO MERCY!”

                      “KITCHENER’S PLAN ADOPTED!”

Footnote 1:

  “Rebels!” Mumble that funny word—don’t let the Person catch it
  distinctly.

Kitchener knows how to handle disagreeable people who are fighting for
their homes and their liberties, and we must let on that we are merely
imitating Kitchener, and have no national interest in the matter,
further than to get ourselves admired by the Great Family of Nations, in
which august company our Master of the Game has bought a place for us in
the back row.

Of course, we must not venture to ignore our General MacArthur’s
reports—oh, why do they keep on printing those embarrassing things?—we
must drop them trippingly from the tongue and take the chances:

“During the last ten months our losses have been 268 killed and 750
wounded; Filipino loss, _three thousand two hundred and twenty-seven
killed_, and 694 wounded.”

We must stand ready to grab the Person Sitting in Darkness, for he will
swoon away at this confession, saying: “Good God, those ‘niggers’ spare
their wounded, and the Americans massacre theirs!”

We must bring him to, and coax him and coddle him, and assure him that
the ways of Providence are best, and that it would not become us to find
fault with them; and then, to show him that we are only imitators, not
originators, we must read the following passage from the letter of an
American soldier-lad in the Philippines to his mother, published 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
bandit’s work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear,
not to follow; we have debauched America’s honor and blackened her
face before the world; but each detail was for the best. We know this.
The Head of every State and Sovereignty in Christendom and ninety per
cent. of every legislative body in Christendom, including our Congress
and our fifty State Legislatures, are members not only of the church,
but also of the Blessings-of-Civilization Trust. This world-girdling
accumulation of trained morals, high principles, and justice, cannot
do an unright thing, an unfair thing, an ungenerous thing, an unclean
thing. It knows what it is about. Give yourself no uneasiness; it is
all right.”

Now then, that will convince the Person. You will see. It will restore
the Business. Also, it will 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 worshipped it so;
and when we have seen it in far lands—glimpsing it unexpectedly in that
strange sky, waving its welcome and benediction to us—we have caught our
breath and uncovered our heads, and couldn’t speak, for a moment, for
the thought of what it was to us and the great ideals it stood for.
Indeed, we _must_ do something about these things: we must not have the
flag out there, and the uniform. They are not needed there; we can
manage in some other way. England manages, as regards the uniform, and
so can we. We have to send soldiers—we can’t get out of that—but we can
disguise them. It is the way England does in South Africa. Even Mr.
Chamberlain himself takes pride in England’s honorable uniform, and
makes the army down there wear an ugly and odious and appropriate
disguise, of yellow stuff such as quarantine flags are made of, and
which are hoisted to warn the healthy away from unclean disease and
repulsive death. This cloth is called khaki. We could adopt it. It is
light, comfortable, grotesque, and deceives the enemy, for he cannot
conceive of a soldier being concealed in it.

And as for a flag for the Philippine Province, it is easily managed. We
can have a special one—our States do it: we can have just our usual
flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the
skull and cross-bones.

And we do not need that Civil Commission out there. Having no powers, it
has to invent them, and that kind of work cannot be effectively done by
just anybody; an expert is required. Mr. Croker can be spared. We do not
want the United States represented there, but only the Game.

By help of these suggested amendments, Progress and Civilization in that
country can have a boom, and it will take in the Persons who are Sitting
in Darkness, and we can resume Business at the old stand.

                                                             MARK TWAIN.


                  *       *       *       *       *

For copies, address the Anti-Imperialist League of New York, 150 Nassau
St., Room 1520. Please enclose postage.

------------------------------------------------------------------------



                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.