Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane was born and raised a Christian man in the United States. His audience in both the United States and England, like him where Christian. It was seen as a marker of manhood and morality. His reporting of the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 was very obviously biases towards the European Christians of Greece versus the Muslim Turkish Army. Crane was trying to paint a picture of a Crusader like man when describing the Greeks in order to gin up support for the Greek army.  There is a slight difference in his correspondents surrounding the Spanish American War. The Spanish, Cuban, and Puerto Rican fighters where all Christian, therefore in his correspondents he stays away from the Christian angle and reports more descriptive of a helpless Islander who cannot be fully trusted but is being saved, in Cranes eye’s, by the morally superior North American white man.

“There is a kind of government that can make every man a soldier but there is no government that can make every man desire to be a soldier…Ask any Greek on the street his opinion of the situation and he will say: “We must fight. There is nothing else to do.” Athens, Greece April 17th (The Works of Stephen), p 13

“To-day I went to a shop and found no one there but a boy seated on a box. “Where is the proprietor?” said I. “He has gone to the war,” said the boy. This man had taken no time to arrange his affairs in careful detail. He might have been gone out to buy a cigar in another shop. The shelves were stripped and the counters were bare. “The proprietor has nailed fast the lid of a great box in which are the things. I cannot sell you anything,” the boy said hastily. “I am going to the front.” Athens, Greece April 29th (The Works of Stephen,) p 15

“View ashore, Ponce, two miles from its little sea port, developed four striking things immediately-American buggies, naked babies, tree laden flaming crimson blossoms, and the enigmatic smile of the Porto Rican. They were all burning in the sunshie and dimmed by the white dust of a tropic city. They were all guarded by the American soldier, a calm, bronze and blue man with a bayonet. And herein lay the supreme interest, the interest of the juxtaposition of Michigan and Port Rico-Grand Rapids serenely sitting in judgement upon the affairs of Ponce. This made on marvel; this was the extraordinary situation that dazed the thoughtful American” Ponce, Porto Rico, Aug 7 (The Works of Stephen Crane), p 176

Crane’s views on race in the Greco-Turkish war are in one way pushing back on how the “Turk” and “Greek” have been stereotypically described by others up until that point. He did this by creating his own streotypes for the two groups. Yet still his description of the “Turk” is very much a form of Oreintalism, describing them as cuniving and untrustworthy. His descriptions of Cubans and Puerto Ricans is more explicitly aligned with the prevaling racist streotypes of lazyness, untrustworthyness, and monolith. 

“Naturally then, this Turk was interesting. He didn’t care, however. He was rather tall and well made and had the face of a man, a man who could think, a man who could fight. He was fit for problems and he was fit for war, this fellow. The collar of his uniform was heavily flourished with gold and a sabre dangled to his spurred heels. He wore glasses, and about his eyes was the calm studious expression that one expects in professors at colleges. Unconsciously to us, perhaps, many of us have fashioned our idea of the Turk on this hang-dog photograph of the Sultan which has been reproduced everywhere. Probably this Turk was no nearer the controlling type, but the it was good to find him where one expected at least to find something fat and greasy.” An Impression of the Concert, (The Works of Stephen Crane) p 12.

“But it is now apparent that if anyone is strolling around Europe looking for a fight he can get it from the Moslem whose late victories from inferior Greece have stirred not only his military spirit, but more than that have fired anew his religious zeal” The Turkish Army, (The Works of Stephen Crane)  p 80

“Anybody who has studied the negotiations between Turkey and Powers over what the Sultan shall be paid in money, land and national advantages for the victorious of his soldiers should see plainly that the Christian statesman of Europe is perfectly incompetent to play the game of diplomacy for one moment with the masters of the art at Constantinople. The Turk invariably makes a monkey and a fool of any white man who deals with him in these matters. History does not show a purely diplomatic victory over the Turk. This is almost proof that diplomacy is composed too much of lies and procrastination to be the high art which Europeans love to name it” The Eastern Question, Greece (The Works of Stephen Crane) p 75

“But there is no special deity for the people here. They are children of pellucid chance, and if Havana was a tub and they were a lot of rubber balls prancing and bouncing within they could not be more joyously irresponsible and incompetent.” Stepehn Crane in Havan Havana, Oct 3 (The Works of Stephen Crane) p 201

Crane was at the front lines of yellow journalism and caught not only in the wars of the Greeks and Turks and Spanish American, but also a social and corporate war between Hearst and Pulitzer. Crane was often critized for his lazyness in the field but his mastery of words and world building allowed him to pen pictures that captivated audiences. 

“Back fell the Greek army, wrathful, sullen, fierce as any victorious army would be when commanded to retreat before the enemy it had defeated” Athens, Greece May 11th, (The Works of Stephen Crane) p45

“The bodies of Privates McColgan and Dunphy were found in the brush. Both were shot in the head. The large cavaties caused by the bullets, which inside a range of 500 yards have a rotary motion, indicate that they were killed at close range. Their bodies were stripped of shoes, hats and cartridges and horribly mutilated” Guantanamo June 12 In The First Land Fight Four of Our Men Are Killed (The Works of Stephen Crane) p 128

“The story of the mutilation of the bodies of the two young privates of Captain Spicer’s company of marines, which was sent in on Saturday last, is now found to be entirely untrue.” Guantanamo June 14th, Only Mutilated By Bullets (The Works of Stephen Crane) p 131

“The guerrillas were still lurking near the woods, and it was unsafe enough in the camp without venturing into the bush. Volunteers from Company C were called for and these seventeen privates volunteered: Boniface, Conway, Fitzegerald, Heilner, Harmson, Hemerie, Lewin, Mann, Mills, Monahan, Nolan, O’Donnell, Ryan, Riddle Sinclair, Sullivan,W.A., and Smith, J.H. They went under Lieutenant Lucas. They arrived in Nevill’s vicinity just as he and his men, together with Shaw and his men, were being finally surrounded at the close range. Lucas and his seventeen men broke through the guerrillas and saved save the pickets. and the whole body then fell back to Crest Hill. That is all there is to it.” Guantanamo, Cuba July 4th , (The Works of Stephen Crane) p153

Similar to his views on Customs & Morals as well as Race, Cranes politics where white, Christian and advocating for the U.S. full filling its role as an Empire with a sphere of influence around the world. 

“Under the evil Spanish Government, Cuba might as well have been a desert. No matter the wealth in the soil or in the rocks, it was kept there by thieving Spanish officials, unless it came forth with oppressive and almost murderous levy. I knows this to be true. Everybody who knows the old life of Cuba knows that it was a life of officialdom, of corruption, ranging from petty bribes to grand gifts. This was true up to the very moment of the raising of the American flag on Morro Castle” Cuba, (The Works of Stephen Crane) 

“Since this little Southern city has become the center of the filibustering industry in the United States there has been considerable excitement here of many different kinds. The town is really pro-Cuban in the most head-long fashion, and a rumor of an expedition can turn people out into the streets…The same lad who longs to fight Indians and to be a pirate on his own account longs to embark secretly midnight on one of these dangerous trips to the Cuban coast.” Jacksonville, Florida, The Works of Stephen

While Crane wrote from a clear supporting of the Greek army and support for U.S. troops “saving” the Caribbean from the Spanish, his descriptions of war where what made him famous. While his contemporaries like Richard Harding Davis and John Bass criticzed his work in Greece, Davis praised his work in Cuba. His correspondents on the battle at Velestino might be the most detached from the reality he wrote while also the most captivating pieces of written work he produced. 

“He was a old school, and he thought the natives were soldiers of the old school. He had a vision of taking out his 25,000 or 30,000 men and meeting the native army…We groaned at this preposterous idea, and it is a sorry, sorry pleasure to find, soon enough, that we groaned for good reason….Major-General Lawton arrived at Manila in a subordinate capacity, he is understood to have remarked that 100,000 men would be a proper number for the occupation of the island. Lawton is one of the best soldiers in the American Army” July 20th 1898 Cuba, The Works of Stephen

“Under the evil Spanish Government, Cuba might as well have been a desert. No matter the wealth in the soil or in the rocks, it was kept there by thieving Spanish officials, unless it came forth with oppressive and almost murderous levy. I knows this to be true. Everybody who knows the old life of Cuba knows that it was a life of officialdom, of corruption, ranging from petty bribes to grand gifts. This was true up to the very moment of the raising of the American flag on Morro Castle” Cuba, The Works of Stephen

“The foreign warships naturally refused to assist the people to safety, but it seems to me that had a United States vessel been there Americans would have regarded such a course as the reverse of natural. The pleasant hypothesis by which the foreigners squared their consciences was that there was no need of flight” Athens, Greece May 11th, The Works of Stephen