On 16 Jan 2008 at 12:28, Horn Jason wrote: > Of course, if you mean Twain, let me humbly add that he did not > consistently oppose "American Imperialism." Jason, Can you or anyone cite an example of Mark Twain's inconsistency in which he changed his mind to support American imperialism? Or was his inconsistency always in the direction of opposing actions he once supported? For example, in 1866 he supported U.S. annexation of Hawaii but from 1867 onward he opposed it. Believing that it was waged solely upon anti-imperialist grounds, he supported the Spanish- American War to "free Cuba" but opposed the creation of an American Empire through the Treaty of Paris that brought the war to a close and was among the first to criticize the severely limited independence granted to Cuba under the Platt Amendment. He also thought the Spanish-American War would result in the liberation of the Philippines from Spanish rule and consistently opposed the U.S. annexation of the Philippines and the Philippine-American War. If he was ever inconsistent about American imperialism in the opposite direction, I'd like to know about it. There is no mention of the decade-long mutual affiliation of Mark Twain and William James with the Anti-Imperialist League in your book about them so you might be interested in these two obituaries published in the Report of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Anti-Imperialist League (Boston: Anti-Imperialist League, 1910): "Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, author of 'To the Person Sitting in Darkness,' employed in the cause of Anti-Imperialism and in behalf of the Filipino those wonderful weapons of satire which were so absolutely at his command, and the members of the League were able to appreciate what is not yet justly understood: that, more then a brilliant humorist, he was a passionate and zealous reformer;... "Professor William James, of Harvard University, the sad echo of whose name not only reaches the continents of America and Europe but is heard with grief in Asia, where the Filipinos knew him as their wise and faithful friend, will be missed because of the important influence he exerted in promoting their liberation and the independence of their country." Jim Zwick