Recently the Boston Book Bums had a chance to sit down with Newsweek Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas about his newest book, The War Lovers. The book covers the run up to, and through, the Spanish-American War; and how a key group of men, Harvard men, shaped the arguments for and against the now largely forgotten war. Thomas’ book profiles strong, complex personalities in Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, philosopher William James and publisher William Randolph Hearst.
The lead Book Bum met Thomas at Porter Square Books to do a quick Q-n-A ahead of his appearance at the popular indie bookseller.
Q: Since so few Americans today know about Spanish-American War what was impetus in writing this book?
A: I was writing about the Iraq War at Newsweek in 2006 and wondering about war fever and how countries get swept into war and about the press’ role and my own role. I’d pretty much been a hawk on the Iraq War and by 2006 I was wondering about my motivations. I decided to go back a century and look at another war of choice, where there was a real fever that has some similarities, history never repeats itself exactly so you can over do this but the Spanish-American War does have some similarities to Iraq and it touches on the thing I wanted to explore, which is why do young men feel the need to go to war. And sometimes why do old men have the need to send them?
Q: What is it about the Spanish-American War that has caused it to fall off Americans radar?
A: Well, Americans don’t have a huge sense of history to begin with. They don’t remember a lot about Word War II either. The reason why we went to war was to liberate Cuba. (Thomas points out most of the U.S. deaths during the war were due to disease rather than combat.) So, the cost wasn’t that great. Why have we forgotten about the first Persian Gulf War? We only lost 250 men. There is a funny calculus here that almost you really have to lose a lot of people, you really have to suffer for a war to be memorable. Wars which not enough people die, don’t get remembered. But, in the Spanish-American War people have totally forgotten that the Philippines, this counterinsurgency we got caught up in almost by accident, we lost 4,000 men. That is the same number have died, roughly in Iraq today. There was something about this war, something very American, that people needed to be reminded about, our kind of aggressiveness, and sense of our own selves, it came out strongly during this period.
Q: Theodore Roosevelt has been romanticized, turned into this mythological figure in a way. How has your opinion of 
the figure changed, before and after writing this book?
A: I was very much influence by Edmund Morris’ The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, he makes Teddy out as a wonderful character, and he is a wonderful character and he was a great President of the United States. He belongs on Mt. Rushmore. But in the period I write about that’s a little less appealing because he really was afflicted with the need to go to war, it’s documented up and down in letters and diaries, he was obsessed with this need to get into combat, to get shot at by the enemy and to shoot back. And once he got this out his system he was a better man I would say. The fever sort of came back later.
(Note: At the outbreak of World War I, an aging and unhealthy Roosevelt sought approval to raise a new volunteer regiment to fight in Europe.)
Q: Why do you think the fever reignited in him?
A: I think it was always there. I think we all have these psychic needs that have a way of reasserting themselves, they’ll go away for a while. There’s a cliché, as we get older, our younger selves come out.
Q: On this urge to go to war, where does serving ones nation or ideals become overtaken by a sort of blood lust. Where does it happen?
A: Well, its murky and a little confusing because countries need to be able to fight wars, have to be willing to fight wars, that’s important. Countries that are pacifistic die. But there is some moments when there is a kind of mob psychology that can take over and that kind of atavistic, primitive impulses kick in.
Q: What did Hearst do to make the Spanish enemy as inhuman possible?
A: Well Hearst turned it into a rape fantasy. He liked to read romantic novels, bodice rippers, and one of the themes is the dastardly cowardly cad who seduces the poor young women. He cast the war as the dastardly decadent Spanish having their way with the beautiful women. Hearst found a true case and exploited it in the person of Evangelina Cisneros, this beautiful young maiden who he rescued from prison, fitting her into the picture he imagined for Cuba. It was an appealing fantasy, in an age when people really cared about macho. People were really worried about their masculinity. They wanted to be rescuing damsels in distress. They were a little threatened by the new woman who would go onto vote, ride bicycles. And there is this great emphasis on manhood in this period and Hearst played into that.
Q: Outside of New England, many people have an impression of Harvard today as a liberal bastion. Talk about the role Harvard played in bringing all these characters together for war?
A: Harvard was the center of racialist theory, social Darwinism, the Anglo-Saxon race was dominant and should be dominant. The problem was people felt weak and soft, Teddy Roosevelt worried that Americas was over civilized and that it was getting soft. He had been taught social Darwinism at Harvard. There was a great need by the upper classes to show they were manly, that’s what it was really about. Soldiers Field was donated by the Higginson family, sport as a manly substitute for war. The Harvard -Yale game got going then as a mock war, it was very bloody.
Q: Was there a character that you came upon that felt needed story told in this much broader story?
A: Josephine Shaw Lowell was the sister of Robert Gould Shaw. Everyone has seen the movie Glory, that’s Robert Gould Shaw. Josephine Shaw Lowell was a close friend of the Roosevelt family and when Teddy Roosevelt was a little boy he heard these stories of heroism under fire, not just about Robert Gould Shaw but of Josephine “Effie” Lowell’s husband Charles Russell Lowell. Go to Memorial Hall (at Harvard,) the most revered Harvard heroes are these two men who embody this youthful ideal of men willing to give their lives for their country. That is what Memorial Hall is all about. As William James called it, ‘Our own Valhalla.’
Q: Seeing how Hearst fomented war and what occurred during the run up to the Iraq War – how a certain level journalistic skepticism recoiled – do you see social media, those people online, taking those roles in future conflicts?
A: Good question and I have two contradictory answers. On the one hand the web can have a mob psychology and that could be really dangerous And a lot of conspiracy theories and people getting themselves all whipped up over nothing, that’s the bad side. On the good side, there is the whole group of skeptics and critics, there will be harder for mass media to tell people what to think. There will be bloggers who’ll say ‘What a second, this is not really happening.’ Social networking can accelerate mob psychology or it can be a useful check on power. I suspect its going to be both.
Boston Book Bums will be reviewing The War Lovers later this week.
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