Message to garcia

A Message to Garcia By Elbert Hubbard

Publisher’s Note

Elbert Hubbard, who founded The Roycrofters in East Autora, New York, was a rugged individualist who worked long and hard throughout his life, and came to an untimely end in the sinking of the Lusitania by a German torpedo in 1915. He was born in Bloomington, Illinois, in 1859, and is best known for the fine editions printed at TheRoycroft Shop. While working at The Roycroft Shop, he published two magazines, The Philistine and The Fra, actually writing much of the material himself. He also devoted some of his time to public speaking, and was as much of a success on the lecture platform as in his writing and publishing. A Message to Garcia had a phenomenal acclaim from the moment it was published, and nobody was more surprisedthan the author himself. He writes the account of its success in the Apologia which follows. The hero of the story, the man who carried the message, was Colonel Andrew Summers Rowan, who, when the Spanish-American War broke out, was a young lieutenant in the United States Army. He was proposed for the difficult mission by the chief of the Bureau of Military Intelligence when President McKinleyrequested the name of a suitable envoy. Lieutenant Rowan was sent at once, alone and unguarded. When he landed on the island of Cuba in secret, he was furnished with native guides by Cuban patriots. His adventures, by his own modest account, were beset by obstacles, but he managed to make his way through the interior and to deliver his message to General Garcia, who was in charge of the revolutionaryforces. There were certainly many fortuitous circumstances connected with the endeavor, but it was the sheer courage and indomitable spirit of the young lieutenant that were at the heart of the accomplishment of his mission. He was decorated for his achievement by the Commander of the United States Army, who said: “I regard this achievement as one of the most hazardous and heroic deeds in militarywarfare.” This was undoubtedly true, but it is for his fine moral character, rather than for his military prowess, that Lieutenant Andrew Summers Rowan will always be remembered.

Apologia

This literary trifle, A Message to Garcia, was written one evening after supper, in a single hour. It was on the Twenty-second of February, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-nine, Washington’s Birthday, and we werejust going to press with the March Philistine. The thing leaped hot from my heart, written after a trying day, when I had been endeavoring to train some rather delinquent villagers to abjure the comatose state and get radioactive. The immediate suggestion, however, came from a little argument over the teacups, when my boy Bert suggested that Rowan was the real hero of the Cuban War. Rowan hadgone alone and done the thing – carried the message to Garcia. It came to me like a flash! Yes, the boy is right; the hero is the man who does his work – who carries the message to Garcia. I got up from the table, and wrote A Message to Garcia. I thought so little of it that we ran it in the Magazine without a heading. The edition went out, and soon orders began to come for extra copies of the MarchPhilistine, a dozen, fifty, a hundred; an when the American News Company ordered a thousand, I asked one of my helpers which article it was that had stirred up the cosmic dust. “It’s the stuff about Garcia,” he said. The next day a telegram came from George H. Daniels, of the New York Central Railroad, thus: “Give price on one hundred thousand Rowan article in pamphlet form – Empire State Expressadvertisement on back – also how soon can ship.” I replied giving price, and stated we could supply the pamphlets in two years. Our facilities were small and a hundred thousand booklets like an awful undertaking. The result was that I gave Mr. Daniels permission to reprint the article in his own way. He issued it in booklet form in editions of half a million. Two or three of these half-million...