Mark Twain’s rewriting of The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Spanish defenders of Guayama, Puerto Rico.
Composed in 1901 as the United States was entering the international struggle for markets for the first time. Twain was an anti-imperialist from the get-go and here he pours his derision on the republican Empire whose conquest of the Philippines was done in the name of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’ and ‘humanitarianism’. A sick joke of a precedent never to be gotten tired of, it seems.
Twain: An early anti-imperialist. He despised the chauvinist lies that hid the ugly truth about the new nation's foreign adventures.
His lust is marching on.
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps—
His night is marching on.I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
Lo, Greed is marching on!”
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!
Our god is marching on!In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom—and for others’ goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich—
Our god is marching on.
The papers provided the necessary propaganda to make the war with Spain inevitable. Hearst's were among the most inflammatory.