Study Questions for Mark Twain, "Comments on the Moro Massacre" (1906)
Background: After the United States' military defeat of Spain in 1898 and the Treaty of Paris that followed it, the McKinley Administration decided that the Philippines would be annexed -- that is, made into a formal U.S. territory, to be governed by U.S. officials. This decision produced a storm of protest in both the Philippines and the United States, and tens of thousands of Americans joined a new organization, the Anti-Imperialist League, to fight the annexation decision and to denounce U.S. expansion overseas altogether. Mark Twain, then 62 years old, became the League's most prominent member, having published by this time virtually all of the literary works for which he is most famous, including The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Prince and the Pauper. In both essays and speeches, Twain railed against imperialism, most notably in a work entitled "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" in 1901. By the time of the Moro Crater Massacre, in which U.S. forces fired upon hundreds of poorly-armed Moros (Muslim Filipinos), Twain had experienced near-bankruptcy, the death of a daughter, and the death of his wife. Moreover, his views in general had become ever-more critical of American society and government. "Comments on the Moro Massacre," which was not published in Twain's lifetime, reflects Twain's growing moral outrage in its brutal sarcasm and sense of betrayal.
1. Why did U.S. forces launch an attack on men, women, and children in the Moro Crater, according to the official cablegram from the U.S. military commander to the U.S. government describing the incident? How many U.S. soldiers participated, and with what sorts of firepower?
2. With what sorts of weaponry does Twain speculate the Moros defended themselves against the U.S. assault?
3. Why does Twain persist in referring to the Moros as "savages"? How does this otherwise offensive term intensify the power of his message?
4. How, according to Twain, does the official cablegram describe the U.S. casualties sustained during the assault? What sort of point about the assault is Twain making here?
5. How, according to Twain, do the casualty totals in the Moro operation compare with the others he mentions (in the Civil War, the Battle of Waterloo, the Cuba campaign)? Why doesn't Twain believe that Americans should feel pride in their soldiers' "victory" over the Moros? How does his sarcasm here (in calling it "the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States") serve as an attack on the sorts of imperialist attitudes common in the U.S. at the time?
6. How, according to Twain, did American newspaper editorial writers respond to the Moro operation? What does Twain suggest about why they responded in this way? How does Twain interpret President Theodore Roosevelt's response to the operation?
7. How does Twain appeal to the humanity and the suffering of the victims of the massacre at the end of the document? Why does he again apply the term "savages" in doing so?