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By Leon Baya

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ee
at .. “apolitical’’ humorist who makes
us laugh at his wit, at his clever use of

language will often.be praised by our
“neutral” bourgeois critics. If he is a writ-
er, he will receive a favorable ‘press, es-
pecially when he blames ‘human nature”’
or “human weakness” for the problems.
presented in a comical manner. But when
the same humorist dares to take a serious,
and more important, a realistic view of

' society, and blames not people, but society,

classes, politics and economics for injus-
tice, he can expect an entirely different
treatment. : :

. When Mark Twain (4835-1910) realized
that our evil ways were based not on a ©
rigid form of human nature, but rather on

~ the capitalist nature of our society, his

previously acknowledged greatness was de-
hied. He was neglected in the press.
Charges of disloyalty were hurled at him;
his mind was regarded as having been
somehow infected with a form of insanity.
His income suffered sharply.

In his early witty writings, when he was
quite naive politically — having even fought
very briefly on the side of the Confederacy
— when he was actually a racist, his repu-
tation spread over the entire nation. He
‘was called.a native genius whose gentle
Satire and clever twists of language were
“distinctly American in flavor and
charm.’’ But when his knowledge broaden-
ed and he became more perceptive of soci-
etal causes that underlay effects, so that he
used his great talents to denounce chauvin-
ist attitudes against Blacks, Chinese, In-
dians, Chicanos and Jews, and when, at-

.tacking even further, he exposed to savage

Tidicule the imperialists of England, Ger-

. Many, Tsarist Russia, Belgium, France,

and of our country as well, critics frequent-
ly accused him of suffering from a mental
breakdown. He was characterized as being
“in a state of mortifying intoxication from
an overdraught of seriousness, something
‘to whiich his head had not been hardened.
Wait, and welcome the prodigal of old on
his return. He will be along in time.”’ Thus,
when he became the Vice President of the.
Anti-Imperialist League, an organization of
Close to a million members who organized
to prevent the imperialist: seizure of the
Philippines, Twain wrote to a friend, “My
Mail was loaded down with letters and post
Cards full of abuse, mostly anonymous,
Some of them going so far as to bid me look

. fora stray bullet.”

He was warned by The Nation that “by
Making himself obnoxious to the people -
who hold the purse strings,” he was incur-

~ ring the hatred of the publishers of his

S, essays and magazine articles. He”
Was termed a “traitor” once he exposed
the tracking down and killing of the Filipin-
0s who initiated the struggle for independ-
ence from colonial Spain; the.ones who did
the killing were the Americans, who thrust
‘the victorious Filipinos aside and, after
decimating their forces and placing thou-
Sands in concentration camps, as well as
trying out new weapons there, took over
Control of the archipelago in order “‘to

_ bring them the benefits of white, Western .

Civilization.” | Courageously, however,
Twain retained his strong, honest position,
and became a symbol of resistance not only
heré, but to the entire world.
We are particularly indebted to Philip
Foner’s Mark Twain: Secial Critic (Inter-
‘Rational Publishers) for most of the quota-
tions from Twain’s works on the subjects
of racism and imperialism, although the
discusses many more aspects of
n’s development, genius and attitudes.
As a child growing up in Missouri, a
Slave state, with a father who was a slave
Owner, and living in an environment which

_ Constantly disparaged’ Blacks, ‘‘foreign-

ers,” Irish-Americans, Native Americans
a Chinese-Americans, Twain was, at
irst, unable to separate truth from his
Prejudiced conditioning. His early. works

ited these minority groups with a kind
“i Crude, disparaging humor which was sel-
Om, if ever, criticized by the literary

world. But his sympathy and understanding
gradually deepened, and his political
awareness sharpened through experience
as a journalist, river pilot and fortune

unter. Gradually, he became a champion
of the ones he had been taught to look
upon with disfavor. He reflected, much
later, on his earlier racist notions and
found them to have been based actually on
ill-advised, concepts: he wrote in his Auto-
biography (a book much altered by his
puritanical and genteel wife) “All negroes
were friends of ours and with those of our
own age, we were in effect comrades. . .It
was on the farm (his father’s) that I got my
strong liking for the race and my appreci-
ation for certain of its fine qualities. This
feeling and estimate have stood the test of

sixty years and more, and have suffered no

impairment. The black face is as welcome
to me now as it was then.”

In the post-Civil War period, Twain per-
ceived that the basic cause of slavery was
the drive for profit. His opposition to slav-
ery grew so intense that his close friend
and fellow writer, William Dean Howells
declared ‘‘No man more perfectly sensed
and more entirely abhorred slavery.”

er Finn, truly one of the great :

American novels, centers around Huck’s
recognition that Jim, the Black man who
has run away rather than be sold down the
river, has a dignity and a courage that
changes Huck’s opinion of the man he had
previously regarded as inferior and hope-
lessly dull. Ironically, Huck blames his own
not attending religious Sunday School more
often for his refusal to return Jim to the
woman who has bought him and from
whom he has escaped. The scene on the raft
in which Huck’s conversion takes place is
surely one of the most dramatic ‘and in-
spiring moments in all literature. Blacks
appear as the chief characters in other
works by Twain, most notably in his
Puddn’head Wilson. In this fine novel, a
Black woman’s resourcefulness _intelli-
gence and basic humanity give the work
distinction.

In his early years, Twain was, in addi-
tion, an unquestioning patriot, endorsing
every action of our government. He advo-
cated the American seizure of the Sand-
wich Islands (Hawaii) and thought, at
first, that our take-over of Cuba was moti-
vated by a desire to bring genuine inde-
pendence to the former Spanish colony. But

_once again, as his insight into motivations

of historical events gained in deeper under-
standing, he reversed his previous.attitudes
and became one of the staunchest voices
against the criminal actions of the imper-
ialist powers. When he exposed the hypoc-
risy and the cruelty of the Spanish-Ameri-

can War, he incurred the hired wrath of

the press of the day. He was abused by the
“military-industrialists” of the time, in-

cluding Thomas Fortune Ryan, J.P. Mor- |

gan, Sr., and, most notably, William Rand-
olph Hearst, Sr. The latter’s jingo press

inflamed the nation with its call of ‘“‘Re-

member the Maime$” a battleship which
was sunk in Havana. To this day, the:
cause of the sinking remains unsolved.
Twain was caustic, but truthful, in his
condemnation of this country’s annexation
of the Philippines, saying: “‘It seems to me

it should be our pleasure and our duty to-

make those people free, and let them deal
with their own domestic problems in their
own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist.
I am opposed to having the eagle put its
talons.on any other land.” ; ;
Twain regarded most missionaries as
accomplices of the imperialists, and when,
after the Boxer Rebellion in China (1898),
an American missionary, incredibly
enough, demanded that the Chinese execute
680 of their own people to atone for the

same number of Chinese converts who had ~

been killed, Twain lashed out at the mis-
sionary. “It.is good,” said Twain, ‘“‘that
this glad tidings (of revenge) comes on
Christmas Eve, just in time to enable us to
celebrate the day with gaiety and enthus-
iasm. A monument should be erected, he
added, ‘“‘and must exhibit 680 heads, so
disposed as to give a pleasing and pretty
effect.”

The unhumorous

Twain

Twain’s revulsion at the horrors of im-
perialism resulted from his realization of
the crimes committed by all ‘‘the civilized
nations” (the quotation marks are his own)
in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He said,
“Dear me, robbery by European nations of
each other’s territories has never been a
sin, is not a sin today. To the several
cabinets the several political establish-
ments of the world are clothes-lines; and a
large part of the official duty of these
cabinets is to keep an eye on each other’s
wash and grab what they can when the
opportunity offers.” He referred to Cecil
Rhodes, the arch English imperialist in
Africa, as ‘‘the gang leader who’’ brought
slavery” to the natives and dared to call
it “civilization.” When the Boer War broke
out between the original colonizers, the
Dutch, and the treasure-seeking English,

- Twain, though critical of the so-called Afri-

kaaners, wrote stingingly about the Brit-

ish and of Rhodes, saying of the latter, ‘‘I .

admire him, frankly I confess it; and when
the timé: comes, I shall buy a piece of the
rope (when he is hanged) for a keepsake.’’
To him, the South Africa Co. was a modern
version of ‘‘the forty thieves.”’

; . of Twain's most savage attacks on
imperialism are To the Person Sitting in
Darkness and King Leopeold’s Soliloquy,

‘two masterpieces of irony and'truth that

seldom, if ever, are discussed among the
bourgeois critics of today. In the first, he
first describes the horrors under which
colonial peoples live, but he predicts (and

we must commend him for his prophetic

vision) that the time will come when these
people, who now understand the cause of
their poverty, misery and disease, will take
matters into their own hands and drive out
their oppressors. ‘‘How, ‘much stock .is
left,” he satirically asks,’ on hand in the
way of Glass Beads and Theology, and
Maxim (machine) 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 profit
and loss, so that we may intelligently de-

cide whether to continue in business or sell
out the property and start a new Civiliza-
tion scheme on the proceedings?

Of Tsarist Russia, one of his most in-
tensely hated governments, he adds that it
carries ‘‘the Prince of Peace in one hand,
and its loot-basket and its butcher-knife in
the other,’ seizing parts of Manchuria,
swelling the rivers with corpses as it does
so.
For Ktng Leopold, the slaughterer by
conservative accounts of more than eight
million native Congolese, Twain saves even
stronger aversion and condemnation. This
notorious ruler, who cut off hands of “‘non-
collaborators,’’ who hanged, -burned and
even crucified blacks so as to get their

- vast resources of minerals, this civilized
beast is, says Twain, the personal friend of

the rulers and bankers of the capitalist
world, including Morgan, Rockefeller,
Ryan and Guggenheim, monsters of the
grossest proportions. Is it any wonder that
Twain had difficulty having both of these
truthful essays printed? Is it any wonder
that the compliant bourgeois press advised
its readers not to listen to a man who was
not now, supposedly, qualified to talk about
serious matters? : :
We trust our readers are familiar with
Twain’s scathing War Prayer, which was
not published until he had been dead for
six years, while the first worldwide im-
perialist war raged. In it, he satirically
has a group of Christians fervently ask for
God’s help in killing, maiming and blinding
the enemy, in creating widows and orphans
and in devastating enemy lands, all in the
name of support for “‘their side”’ in a war.
It is this mature, socially and politically
aware Mark Twain that remains generally
neglected and unknown. Even so enjoyable
a performance as “‘Mark Twain Tonight,”
in which a notorious red-baiting actor ap-
pears. as Twain on one of his lecture
tours, makes not a single reference to
Twain’s anti-imperialist stand. He did,
however, recite effectively from the great

- passage in Huckleberry Fian which indi-

cates Twain’s respct for Afro-Americans, a
respect that was hard to come by in those
days and is still in too short supply in the -
literary community today.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 5, 1976—Page 9