Sunday, July 4, 2010

By Reviewed by John French

"The War Lovers"

By Evan Thomas

Little, Brown and Company, $29.99

'The War Lovers" by Evan Thomas, is a strange book, not a bad book but a strange one, starting with the title. The focus of the book is on prominent Americans in the 1890s. Three of them, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge and William Randolph Hearst, were war lovers to such an extreme extent that they wanted the United States to declare war on any arguably hostile nation, ostensibly in the interest of promoting national vigor.

But other protagonists in "The War Lovers," such as Speaker of the House Thomas B. Reed, Harvard Professor William James and even President William McKinley, feared war and strove to avoid it.

Perhaps a better title would have been "War of Choice," because that is plainly what the author thinks of the Spanish American War, which he analogizes to the invasion of Iraq that was justified by references to bogus weapons of mass destruction; the war with Spain was justified by a bogus Spanish plot to blow up the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor, a calamity almost definitely caused by an internal shipboard accident.

Another plausible title might have been "The Racial Supremacists." In an era when an understanding of human origins was rudimentary, Roosevelt, Lodge and others had already decided it was possible to identify an Anglo-Saxon "race" that was superior and destined to run the world. Notwithstanding their devotion to the principles of the Union cause in the American Civil War, those men still looked down on people of color.

The book performs a useful service in reminding us of people and circumstances that have been crowded out of popular recollection by more recent figures and events. For example, Speaker Reed, a consummate parliamentarian, exercised such control over the United States House of Representatives that he was known as "Czar Reed" and considered the second most powerful man in Washington, D.C. William Randolph Hearst, who was able to own and operate the New York Journal because his mother owned and operated western silver mines, carried "yellow journalism" to new depths by printing stories, replete with artists' illustrations, of events that never occurred.

Inevitably, the emphasis in "The War Lovers" drifts toward Hearst and Roosevelt, the more dynamic and outrageous of the central characters. It is difficult to come up with a kind comment about Hearst. His overriding motivation in life was to expand his newspaper's circulation. War is news so Hearst relentlessly promoted war. He would gladly have seen America go to war with England at a time when the British navy had 50 battleships and the American navy had three.

The long-smoldering revolt of the Cubans against Spain served him even better. Without regard for the truth, Hearst's Journal published lurid stories of Spanish atrocities committed on helpless Cubans.

Teddy Roosevelt's motives were both more personal and altruistic: He wanted to make amends for his father's decision to hire a substitute during the Civil War and he thought war would lead to a national expansion that would be good for the nation's spirit. But his obsession was as extreme as Hearst's; he seriously considered an American invasion of Canada.

Without benefit of a newspaper to spread his views, Roosevelt wrote or spoke to anyone who might promote American intervention in the Cuban insurrection. By the late 1890s, he had been named Assistant Secretary of the Navy on his express representation that he "had no preconceived policy of any kind," when, in fact, as he disclosed to his sister, "I am a quietly rampant 'Cuba Libre' man." Once in office, he was insubordinate and took full advantage of his boss' long absences to promote war preparedness.

By 1898, the Spanish Empire, once the mightiest European power, was in pitiful decline. It could not afford a mistake in dealing with inflamed American public opinion. It made a whopper by foolishly breaking off diplomatic relations with the United States. Within hours, the American Navy's North Atlantic Squadron, based in Virginia, slipped its moorings and sailed for the Caribbean.

Nearly everyone wanted to join the rush to war. "Buffalo Bill" Cody offered to raise an army of 30,000 Indians. The government politely declined.

Against the wishes of President McKinley, Roosevelt resigned his post at the navy department to seek a commission in the army. He got it, as a lieutenant colonel of a regiment made up of his former western cowboy buddies and his current social set of New York swells, both of whom he helped to recruit.

This unlikely combination became the Rough Riders, of fame and glory. The story of their assimilation into the army, their transport by rail and ship to Florida and Cuba, and their deployment for battle reads like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan. The U.S. Army had not fought a war for more than 30 years, and the rust showed.

But Roosevelt proved a strong and inspirational leader of men, if a needlessly rash one. His impetuous charge up Kettle Hill (not San Juan Hill) was unnecessarily dangerous but ultimately successful. He was lightly wounded twice but only regretted later that his wounds were not more serious.

Hearst also longed to go to Cuba. He was, after all, the prophet of the "journalism that acts." So he offered to raise and equip a regiment; the government declined. He next offered a 130-foot yacht, with himself in command; the navy accepted the yacht but not its commander.

Finally, Hearst chartered a steamer, stocked it with massive provisions and staffed it with, among others, his mistress and her sister and two motion-picture cameramen. He also took along his star reporter, who was wounded while covering a battle and lay near the battlefield for two days because Hearst abandoned him.

We have largely forgotten the war of 1898, which is too bad because it provides continuing lessons. For example, when the Spanish agreed to surrender at Santiago, the Americans decided to exclude the Cuban rebels from the ceremony. One of those rebels was Fidel Castro's father and, in 1959, when Fidel marched into Santiago, he used the incident as the basis for a bitter anti-American tirade.

Still, we see enough in "The War Lovers" to appreciate how diplomat John Hay could call this country's campaign against Spain a "splendid little war." It was so short (a few months in the spring and summer of 1898) and so easy (the army and navy staged fake battles to allow the Spaniards to surrender with dignity) and so successful (it resulted in American acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Hawaii) that it gave this country a false sense of New World power and Old World decline.

Alas, as both worlds discovered in a few short years, Old World Spain was not representative of Old World Germany.