START TAPE 022



START TAPE 022

BEGIN INTERVIEW

DIRECTIONAL

INT: Talk about how Pulitzer helped egg on the war with Cuba.

MILTON: Well, ah, Joseph Pulitzer came to the United States from what today -- what then was the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was a young man, had nothing. He was dirt poor. He made his way to St. Louis and became a writer for the German language newspapers there and while he was in St. Louis, managed to become very wealthy, owned several of these newspapers, and married a woman who was actually related to Jefferson Davis, ah, the president of the Confederacy. When he came to New York, ah, he didn't really fit in and he started this newspaper which essentially appealed to the German immigrant population. And, therefore, he was, ah, feared by the establishment in New York as a kind of demagogue. But he had a great, ah, mission which was to make immigration respectable. He raised money for the Statue of Liberty when the -- the establishment in New York really had neglected this project. Ah, he wrote in his newspaper to have the immigrant school children send in their coins and so forth. And this was his great triumph. And that was really how he became accepted as a part of New York. And, like most of these publishers, he was in the newspaper business largely to push his political ideas, which were democratic. And at the time, ah, part of that was being expansionist. Ah, they were patriotic and they believed that a lot of these, ah, countries around us would be much better off, indeed, if they were part of United States.

CUT

DIRECTIONAL

INT: Talk about Cuba junta in New York ...

MILTON: Well, the Cuban nationalists were divided into two branches. There were the revolutionaries who were fighting in Cuba and then there were the exiles, who were largely in New York. And a lot of these were middle-age storekeepers who had come to, ah, Brooklyn 20 or 30 years before and they were still revolutionaries at heart. They had, ah, an office and a, ah, lawyer a PR man named Horatio Rubens, ah, who put out press releases and entertained the newspaper reporters and so forth. Ah, it was called the Peanut Club because they gave free peanuts away. But most of these men were really long past the, ah, days when they were ever going to get into combat. In fact, one of them owned a cigar store and somebody gave him some dynamite that he had sto-- stolen from a construction site on the theory that, ah, he could ah, smuggle this down to the rebels in Cuba. And the poor man came across the ferry from Brooklyn to New York. Ah, he had the dynamite in his suitcase and he forgot it. And he was so upset that it might fall into the wrong hands that he wanted to call and turn himself in to the police. And he had to be dissuaded from doing this by Mr. Rubens.

INT: What sort of stories did they try to get the press to tell about the Cuban Revolution?

MILTON: Ahm, the revolution that was going on in Cuba was largely guerrilla warfare. Ah, there weren't really big battles going on. There was the Spanish colonial army, ahm, was trying to control a population that was, ah, unsympathetic, to say the least. And they tried to do this by, ah, putting fences across a lot of the territory that they considered friendly, guard houses, and so forth. Really it was a losing battle. You can't fight a guerrilla war like that, as we know today. Ahm, but Americans didn't understand that, so a lot of stories were given out at the Peanut Club about pitched battles, ah, and quite romanticized, ah, in their, ah, affect. One story was that the, ah, Cuban guerrillas had an amazon regiment. These women rode into battle, and, you know, the men, ah, on the Spanish army were so taken aback that they might have to shoot a woman that they ran away, ah, you know, in horror. Of course, this was a total fantasy.

CUT

INT: Talk about Weyler coming to Cuba.

MILTON: Yeah. I don't know how much of a story that makes. I mean that's true. Ahm ...

DIRECTIONAL

INT: Characterize Richard Harding Davis.

MILTON: Well, Richard Harding Davis was perhaps the first really famous journalist. Ahm, he really started this idea of the foreign correspondent as the guy in the safari jacket, you know, striding through the jungle, ah, having all kinds of wonderful adventures. And, ahm, he also represented an ideal of, ah, chivalry or "muscular Christianity" is what it was called in those days. Ah, he had a lot of trouble living up to this. Ah, you know, he almost could never have any relations with women because, ah, that would violate his -- his ethic that he had put forth. And he wanted to go down to Cuba and have an adventure. Here were all these slightly younger men traveling with the guerrillas and having a wonderful, ah, manly adventure and he was a little bit too famous to do that. They put him on a ship. Ah, they got him down there in a hotel and, ah, just about the day he was to slip off and join Gomez, the, ah, newspaper, the Journal, ran a, ah, front page story saying, "Richard Harding Davis Joins the Guerrillas," and there was the -- his picture on the front page. And this was sold in Cuba. So, of course, he couldn't go. And he became terribly frustrated by his own celebrity.

INT: Tell the story about him in Cuba with Remington and add the Hearst bit.

MILTON: Well, Hearst at one point sent Richard Harding Davis and the illustrator Frederick Remington down to Cuba. And Remington was miserable. Ah, he was seasick on the voyage down. Ah, he drank quite a lot. Ahm, Richard Harding Davis said that he was a nice fellow, but a perfect child, he couldn't be bothered with him. And at one point, Remington supposedly sent a telegram to Hearst saying he wanted to come home and Hearst cabled back, "You provide the pictures, I'll provide the war." Ahm, that's probably true, although I don't think it can be actually proven. But what happened really was that Remington did go home. Ah, he just couldn't take it anymore. So he was back in New York. Richard Harding Davis, ahm, was on his way back on the ship Olivette and there was a young woman, a young Cuban woman who came on the ship. She was suspected of smuggling letters for the guerrillas. So, ah, Harding Davis wrote this story about how the woman was strip-searched. Richard Hard-- ah, excuse me -- Frederick Remington back home draws an illustration to go with this. And it has this young Cuban lady, whose name was printed in the paper, Senorita Aranga, being stripped naked on the deck by these leering Spanish officers. Well, that wasn't what happened at all and, of course, Senorita Aranga was mortified, ah, when this was printed in the Journal. And it does illustrate, I suppose, in a way the difference between pictures and words, because Harding Davis had never said she was strip-searched on deck. Actually it was a matron that did this in a cabin. But he was able to create that impression with words to allow people, ah, to become horrified without actually saying anything that was untrue. But with pictures, you can't do that. And so, ahm, the poor Cuban lady, ahm, ended up being very angry with the newspaper. So did Richard Harding Davis. He quit over it. And I don't think Frederick Remington was that unhappy at all because his picture got on the front page of the paper.

CUT

DIRECTIONAL

MILTON: When Richard Harding Davis saw what they had done with this story, he was so indignant and he told Hearst that he would never work for him again, and he didn't.

CUT

END TAPE 022

STARTE TAPE 023

INT: Describe Scovel as sort of Pulitzer's Richard Harding Davis.

DIRECTIONAL

MILTON: Well, the World's star correspondent was a fellow named Sylvester Scovel, known to his friends as Harry Scovel. And he was a very interesting character. Like a lot of these correspondents, ah, he just went to Cuba on his own. He had no affiliation with any newspaper, managed to walk out of his hotel and go into the bush. And the difference with Scovel was he was very successful. He met the rebel leader, Maximo Gomez, and Gomez became quite fond of Scovel, largely because he was a terrific horseman. He had been an equestrian drillian (?) back in his military school days. So there were a lot of legends in Cuba about Scovel because he was one of the few who managed to go back and forth between the city and the rebels. He was usually described and sometimes pictured in the pages of the New York World as, ahm, a cowboy in a buckskin fringed jacket riding on a huge stallion. There weren't any stallions like this in Cuba. They had all been killed off or taken by the Spanish long ago. And, in reality, the way he did it was that he disguised himself as a plumbing supply salesman, a very sort of seedy fellow and, you know, his, ahm, jacket covered with cigar ashes and worn-down shoes, very, ahm, unassuming. And that was how he got most of his major scoops.

CUT

INT: Because of his association, he gained the animosity of Weyler. Tell about that.

MILTON: Well, Scovel became so famous at the time that there were a lot of rumors about him. Ah, one is that he was really working for the rebels much more than for his newspaper, ahm, arranging shipments of dynamite and so forth. And another rumor was that, ah, he was an emissary of the United States government, which in fact, ah, there is some truth to it. Scovel was a McKinley Republican. He was very close to Fitzhugh Lee, the consul in Havana, and he was carrying some messages back and forth, ah, from the government and the State Department to Gomez. Ah, of course, he adamantly denied this whenever he was accused. General Weyler really hated Scovel, put a price on his head several times. And, ahm, at one point, ah, in '97 they did, ah, capture him. So he was in jail. Ah, he was a very important prisoner. Ah, he had furniture. All the local girls came and brought him presents. He was a handsome fellow. And, ah, he was treated, ah, as an honored guest of the jail. And he was in some danger, but probably not much because had Spain executed him, it probably would have been war between the United States and Spain. And at one time Weyler just came to visit him and stood outside the cell and looked in and saw these heaps of presents from the local young ladies, all kinds of handicrafts and pillows and embroidered pillows and so forth, and just walked away in disgust. Then he was defeated completely.

INT: So he was released, but ...

MILTON: Well, Scovel was released, ah, ahm, through, ahm, intercession between the United States State Department and, ahm, Spanish government. There were resolutions passed in Congress for this and so forth, and Spain really had no choice at that point. It probably did delay somewhat the war because while he was in jail, ahm, coverage kind of came to a halt. And the danger was not totally imaginary. Scovel's assistant was found beside the road murdered in a ditch shortly before, ah, he was released. So there were some dangers there, but they were mostly suffered by the Cubans, not the American correspondents.

CUT

INT: Tell the story of Evangelina Cisneros.

MILTON: Evangelina Cisneros was the young daughter of, ah, one of the wealthiest nationalists in Cuba. And her family was interned on the Isle of Pons. And at one point EvEvangelina became part of an escape attempt. Her role was to, ah, occupy the, ah, Spanish officer, so to speak, while, ah, the rest of the people made good their escape. And, ah, for this role she was thrown in prison in Havana. And there was a large campaign in the newspapers in the United States to, ah, free her. Correspondents went to see her. It was really more of an insane asylum, so she wasn't being that badly treated, but it certainly wasn't a very nice situation for a young woman. Ahm, they arranged an escape attempt. This was done by William Randolph Hearst, who got a hunk of a man named Carl Decker to arrange this escape. And he rented the house next door and put a plank across from the window to the window of the prison where she was and walked across and, ahm, broke in that way and rescued her. Ah, in truth, everybody had been paid off very well, ah, long in advance. So unless he had fallen off the plank, there really wasn't much risk. They brought her back to the United States. They had a rally in Madison Square Garden, ah, reams of newsprint about this heroine. It's an interesting study of how a revolutionary is presented to a middle class audience in an acceptable way. Of course, this story was completely changed. We never did know why she was in jail and, ah, she was this young innocent maiden. Ahm, and, interestingly, they made her an American citizen, ah, the day after she arrived in New York, ah, which was a kind of odd twist for a Cuban revolutionary.

CUT

INT: Describe Scovel and the Maine explosion.

MILTON: Well, Harry Scovel and his friend, George Ray, who worked for the Herald, were sitting in the cafe of the Inglaterra Hotel, their favorite hang-out and the favorite hang-out of all the journalists, one evening. And they heard this tremendous explosion. They guessed immediately that it was the battleship Maine and, ah, this was very near the harbor. They ran down and saw the Maine in flames, ah, sinking. Ahm, they went out on the boat. They commandeered a boat, ah, went out, ahm, rode around for a while and could see, ah, what a terrible situation it was. Now the question was, how to get the news of this back to New York. You had to have a censor's approval, ah, to get a telegram through. But Scovel, being very resourceful, had asked his friends, ahm, who were nationalist spies, to steal a few of these. So he always had a few blank ones in his pocket, and that was basically how he managed to get the news through by using one of these extra, ah, blank telegram slips.

INT: Who did Hearst blame for the explosion?

MILTON: Well, the immediate reaction of the American public was that the Maine had been blown up by a Spanish torpedo. Ah, in fact, no one at the time really knew what had happened, but that was the assumption. The Journal announced this in huge headlines the next day. Ah, in fact, the people on the scene were a little bit confused about this. Ah, there were rumors that Hearst had sent a ship loaded with dynamite down there, ah, to Cuba a few months before, and people thought, well, maybe that had gotten in the wrong hands. Maybe it was a mistake or maybe they had actually blown up the Maine just to, ah, prompt the United States to come into war. That really wasn't true either. Ahm, years later there was a study -- in fact, several studies which determined that it was probably a coal bunker fire. They used soft coal at that time and it was very easy for spontaneous combustion to start a fire in the bunkers and that would lead to an explosion. But it was a great mystery at the time and the Navy, ahm, really somewhat wimped out on this. They didn't exactly say that the Spanish did, ahm, plant a torpedo or whatever, but they didn't say they didn't either. And that really set the stage that made the war possible.

CUT

INT: Tell the story of how he covers the camps at Tampa.

DIRECTIONAL

MILTON: The United States hadn't been at war since the Civil War really, and in the interim the Army and Navy had been sadly neglected. Young people didn't go into the services to become officers. That's why a lot of them were correspondents, I suspect, because, ah, military career was, ahm, just not a very good ah, way to spend your life. So when they started, ah, assembling for the invasion of Cuba, there was quite a scene. I mean some of these generals had, indeed, fought in the Civil War. They were elderly, elderly men sitting in their rocking chairs on the hotel, ah, porch in Tampa and, ah, meanwhile there was only a narrow gauge railroad, one track coming into Tampa bringing all this material and men down there. There was a tremendous, ah, pile-up of box cars on all the sidings clear up into Georgia. Ah, it was a mess basically. And the correspondents didn't know what to do about this. Would it be unpatriotic to write about it? And there was one correspondent, Poultney Bigelow, who decided that it was his job to tell the truth. And he did. He wrote a rather harsh article about, ah, ahm, how we really weren't ready.

DIRECTIONAL

MILTON: There was a correspondent named Poultney Bigelow who decided he was going to write an article exposing how unready the American troops really were for combat. And he did and he was ostracized for this, ah, quite severely, ahm, and denounced as unpatriotic and so forth. But, in private, the correspondents really understood that he was correct. The only really experienced combat-ready soldiers that the Army had were the Ninth and Tenth Buffalo regiments. And these were mainly African American soldiers who had been out on the frontier forts, ah, stationed out there, and they were cavalry soldiers and they were good, but, ah, when they embarked for Cuba, they didn't have enough room in the boat, so they left the horses behind. So this really is a problem for the cavalry -- no horses. And, ah, in fact, in the Battle of San Juan Hill, these poor fellows, you know, had to run up the hill, ahm, with the rest of the infantry, which wasn't how they were trained at all, although in some illustrations of the battle you will see that they have gotten their horses back. They're often pictured as riding up the hill on horseback.

CUT

INT: Talk about Stephen Crane.

DIRECTIONAL

MILTON: Well, Stephen Crane was also one of the correspondents in Cuba. He started out with the Journal and then switched to the World. And he had written a novel called The Red Badge of Courage which gave a very vivid picture of what it was like to be under fire in combat. In reality, Crane didn't know a thing about combat, had never experienced it, and was about the least military type of, ah, person you can imagine. So he finds himself in Guantanamo, ah, where -- which was the Marine outpost there. There wasn't much going on at the time. They weren't really expecting combat, ah, to happen imminently. And he was talking to an Army surgeon. Actually he was a volunteer from the reserves. They were standing beside the tent and this Army surgeon, whose name was Dr. John Gibb, ah, started saying about -- something about, "Well, I certainly don't want to die in this place." And just as those words came out, ah, a bullet was fired and he was shot in the head and fell over into a trench, dead. And Stephen Crane jumped in the trench and was stuck there all night long under fire, ah, with the body of this, ah, man, his friend whom he greatly admired. And so that was his first taste of combat.

CUT

INT: Tell another Crane story.

MILTON: Well, there was a skirmish at Las Guasimas and, ah, Edward Marshall, who actually wrote for a rival paper of Stephen Crane's, was shot and he was very upset, because now he wasn't going to get to file his story. Everyone knew there wouldn't be very many battles in the war. This was his chance and, ah, Stephen Crane, ah, very gallantly, ah, raced back through the enemy lines to, ah, file the story for the other newspaper. And, ah, this was actually about the last thing Stev-- Stephen Crane did for a while. Ah, there was yellow fever there. He very soon came down with yellow fever and, ah, before long, the -- almost the entire ah, New York World's, ahm, corps of correspondents down there was ill, lying in the tents. And Sylvester Scovel's wife had been in Jamaica and actually came ashore. She paid somebody to, ahm, bring her into the camp, ah, on a small boat, waded ashore and was nursing all these men. She didn't get paid for this or didn't get any thanks. Then had to eventually make her way back to New York on a passenger steamer.

CUT

INT: Remember how Crane covered the Battle of Las Guasimas?

DIRECTIONAL

MILTON: Well, ah, Theodore Roosevelt, I guess, was rather typical in some ways of these ah, leaders who had very little combat experience. They were changing, ahm, through the bush and through the forest and, ah, Stephen Crane, who by now, having been at Guantanamo, was a military expert, at least one engagement, ah, happened to notice that he kept hearing these sounds of a dove, this "Coo-coo-coo," and, ah, he thought he recognized that as the signal used by the Spanish scouts. And, ah, in fact, that's what it was, but, ah, Roosevelt, ah, wouldn't listen to this when the Cubans warned him that the Spanish were around and, ah, they did walk right into a terrible ambush.

CUT

DIRECTIONAL

MILTON: Well, of course, the newspapers couldn't get all these stories, so they did get a lot of their information from reading the competition. The New York World had a fellow named Nichols down in Jamaica who would buy the newspaper and then re-write the stories and credit them to World correspondents. And, ah, Arthur Brisbane knew this was happening, planted a story about the tragic death of an Austrian artillery officer named Reflipe W. Thenuz. And, ah, of course, Nichols picked this up, published an item on it, and he was caught because Reflipe W. Thenuz was a near anagram for "We pilfer the news." And so the -- the Journal had tremendously good time with this. They solicited funds for the Thenuz memorial and published indignant letters about the World stealing their stories. But the twist on this was that, ah, ah, Nichols had given this story a byline of a fellow named Ralph Payne, who was a member of the World group down there that nobody liked very much. So I believe from that that, ah, Nichols knew this was a fake story because Payne got fired, ah, and Nichols got his job as a result.

DIRECTIONAL

INT: The story of Creelman and Hearst ...

MILTON: Well, Hearst was down with, ah, quite a bit of equipment. He had his own ship, the Sylvia. He had film crews. He just was prepared to, ah, cover a tremendous war. Ah, there wasn't enough action really to keep him happy. He did get involved in the assault on a block house at El Caney, and James Creelman, who was Hearst's favorite correspondent, really a tremendously self-important little man, ah, got carried away and he had his pistol, he drew his pistol and started shooting and ran up the hill and got -- took a bullet in the back and fell over, thought he was dying at the moment, or thought he might be paralyzed. And the next thing he knew was he awoke from his daze and there was Hearst leaning over him wearing a straw hat with a nice ribbon in it. And he said, "Well, I'm sorry you're shot, but wasn't it a splendid fight? We beat all the other newspapers."

CUT

DIRECTIONAL

INT: Talk about the surrender.

DIRECTIONAL

MILTON: By the time the Spanish-American War began, the Spanish armed forces ah, had been reduced to a rather sad state and there was a real danger that Spain would surrender before we actually got the Army and the infantry landed and into battle. That was, ah, a tragedy from the point of view of General Schafter because that meant that the Navy would have won the war. So he was in a very bad mood about this, very grouchy. And, ah, he was also quite angry with, ah, especi-- especially the correspondents from the New York World because they had allied themselves to the Navy and were serving basically as naval intelligence. The Navy didn't have any spies, and the World correspondents were their spies. So come the actual surrender, ah, Schafter tried to keep correspondents from covering it, which was kind of a strange decision. And, ah, several of them managed to sneak in anyway, including Harry Scovel of the World. There was the moment where they, ah, pulled down the Spanish flag and raised the Stars and Stripes, ah, over the courtyard in Santiago and Schafter looks up and right next to the flag pole there's Harry Scovel up on the roof, ah, he's going to be in all a pictures of this and he was just furious, had him pulled down and, ah, berated him, called him names and apparently struck him. And Scovel struck him back, ah, just instinctively, he said. So he was thrown in jail and this was portrayed as, you know, this horrible yellow journalist inserting himself into the -- into the victory ceremony and striking the general. And actually Scovel was a hero of the war. He had done as much as anybody else to win it. Ah, there were protests, ahm, everywhere about this, but it really ruined Scovel's career to a large extent and it just shows how unfair history can be. He should have been the hero of the war and, ahm, after that he really didn't have much of a career, though he did settle down in Havana and became the first automobile dealer in Havana. He advertised in the paper. It was "Ride with Harry Scovel."

CUT

INT: Describe the World celebration for the North Atlantic Squadron at the Hudson River.

DIRECTIONAL

INT: How Hearst donated the Buccaneer but still couldn't get a commission to the Army.

MILTON: Well, Hearst was a very strange man and he donated his yacht The Buccaneer to the Navy. What he really wanted was a commission very badly, couldn't seem to get it. And several people saw him waiting in the office of the Secretary of the Navy just like an ordinary supplicant, you know, sort of sitting there with his head down. As famous as he was and as wealthy, he just didn't seem to know how to use pull at all. Ah, he was just there waiting in line with all the rest of the, ah, doctors and lawyers who thought they deserved a commission.

END TAPE 023

START TAPE 024

DIRECTIONAL

MILTON: Stephen Crane and Richard Harding Davis were in Puerto Rico and, ah, at this point, ah, ahm, most Puerto Ricans were, ah, ripe for surrender. I mean there was really nothing to stop them. So they got the idea that they were going to capture the village. And, ah, Richard Harding Davis actually slept in and missed his chance. Stephen Crane got up early enough and, ah, sort of rambled into this little village and the locals came out when they saw him, did surrender, and gave him the keys to the local jail. So Crane let everybody out, all the prisoners, and lined 'em up in the town square and randomly divided them between good guys and bad guys. (Laughs) Had them lined up and I guess the bad guys returned to jail and the good guys released. He was having a quite a time for himself and then he threw a celebration and invited everybody in town to, ah, drink, ah, at the local watering hole. And this was his -- his capture of the village.

CUT

INT: Well, the Spanish-American War was over so quickly, and it was actually a considerable victory ah, for the United States in terms of, ah, getting pretty much what we wanted. But a few months later then the reaction started in the press. Very few had been killed in combat, but there were a lot of cases of yellow fever and malaria and so forth and these people were still in tents out on Long Island near Montauk. And the papers, ah, then turned against the Secretary of War and, ah, of course, everybody had been holding their criticisms since the beginning of the campaign. And I think this is what often happens with the press. Ah, they don't say what they really have in mind and, then ah, when it comes to a point where the tide turns there was a deluge of criticism of the Secretary of War and, ah, the Army's handling of things. And it was very sad in a way because these veterans were just, ahm, out there, you know, suffering from fevers and they hadn't ever been decommissioned or taken care of.

CUT

DIRECTIONAL

INT: Is there an intersection between the press coverage and McKinley's revolving policy ...

MILTON: You know, I really feel -- I mean I'm sure the press coverage, ahm ... got Americans ready for this war. Ah, it did have that impact on public opinion. But I really think that it had very little with the specific decision. Ahm, the problem was there were German warships coming in and, of course, the Cubans hate us because we didn't help them when we -- when they needed help. We only came in when they were on the point of winning the war. But, ahm, in real politic terms, I think that's probably inevitable because we could tolerate Spain being in Cuba, we couldn't tolerate Germany, ah, taking over the country, which was a very real possibility. So, ah, I mean I don't know that everyone would agree with me, but I think ...

DIRECTIONAL

INT: What about the changing perceptions of Cubans?

MILTON: They were completely unprepared for how poor Cuba was and also for the fact that a lot of these, ah, rebel soldiers were black. This is very much a class rebellion and, ah ...

DIRECTIONAL

MILTON: Well, the American soldiers, largely these were volunteers, reserve units, National Guard and so forth, down there, had been reading stories about Cuba in the press and they were completely unprepared for the reality of it. These rebel soldiers didn't have uniforms. Often they didn't have guns. They were dirt poor, starving, ah, men in rags, by and large. And also they were largely black. Ah, there was a large class component and even a racial component in this rebellion. And, ahm, it was a complete shock and, ah, in some ways a disillusioning shock. I mean they just, ah, often weren't that sympathetic to these poor men, ahm, wondered what they were doing down there. And, ah, you know, fortunately -- I guess if you could say it's fortunate -- the war didn't last very long, but the Cubans didn't ah, get that well treated. I mean there was one episode where the Cubans came up to parley and they were fired on.

CUT

END INTERVIEW

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download