CARTOONS AND THE POLITICS OF MASCULINITY IN THE SPANISH AND AMERICAN PRESS DURING THE WAR OF 1898/LAS VIÑETAS SATÍRICAS Y LA POLÍTICA DE LA MASCULINIDAD EN LA PRENSA AMERICANA Y ESPAÑOLA DURANTE LA GUERRA DE 1898

Abstract

This article examines the symbolic use of photography and cartoons during the War of 1898. The Spanish-American War was a war of images as well as guns, and cartoons and photographs were an important ingredient in what was nicknamed the 'Splendid Little War' in the US and the 'Disaster' in Spain. The political cartoon became an experimental laboratory for the propagandistic battles played out in the press of both countries. Cartoons helped differentiate a nation-subject from its Other, an abjected alterity conventionally associated with the feminine as well as with children, animals and 'undesirable' races. The images analyzed here reveal that honor and manhood were at stake and help to explain significant funds appropriated for the war effort.

Headnote

RESUMEN

Este artículo examina el uso simbólico de la fotografía y viñetas satíricas durante la guerra de 1898. La guerra entre España y los Estados Unidos fue una de imágenes tanto como una de fusiles, por tanto los dibujos y fotografías fueron un ingrediente importante en lo que en los EE.UU se conoció como la 'Splendid Little War' y en España 'El Desastre.' La caricatura política llegó a ser un laboratorio experimental para las batallas propagandísticas llevadas a cabo por ambos países. Estas imágenes ayudaron a diferenciar el sujeto-nación de su Otro, una alteridad abyecta asociada convencionalmente con lo femenino y también a la infancia, los animales y las razas 'inferiores'. Las vinetas analizadas aquí revelan cómo el honor y la masculinidad se pusieron en juego, lo cual ayuda a explicar los fondos significantes que los gobiernos asignaron para la guerra.

Palabras clave

Guerra de 189; viñetas; masculinidad; honor.

ABSTRACT

This article examines the symbolic use of photography and cartoons during the War of 1898. The Spanish-American War was a war of images as well as guns, and cartoons and photographs were an important ingredient in what was nicknamed the 'Splendid Little War' in the US and the 'Disaster' in Spain. The political cartoon became an experimental laboratory for the propagandistic battles played out in the press of both countries. Cartoons helped differentiate a nation-subject from its Other, an abjected alterity conventionally associated with the feminine as well as with children, animals and 'undesirable' races. The images analyzed here reveal that honor and manhood were at stake and help to explain significant funds appropriated for the war effort.

Key words

1898 War; cartoons; masculinity; honor.

1. Introduction

An examination of symbolism in war reportage of both the Spanish and the American press reveals that the Spanish-American war of 1898 was a war of images as well as guns: cartoons and photographs were an important symbolic register in what was nicknamed in the US the 'Splendid Little War' after an expression first used by the US ambassador to England John Hay, and the 'Disaster' in Spain. In the popular press the political cartoon became an experimental laboratory for the propagandistic battles played out simultaneously in both countries. On the one hand, images helped differentiate a nation-subject from its Other, an abjected alterity conventionally associated with women, children, animals and 'undesirable' races. A survey of the battle of images in the popular press is especially useful for understanding ways in which gender coding served to spark nationalism and justify war. Projecting ideal femininity and masculinity in the late nineteenth century meant distinguishing men from women as opposites in body type, clothing and manners. The differences were highlighted by depictions of men who failed to measure up to the ideal as unworthy of their sex, "projecting the exact opposite of true masculinity" (Mosse, 1996: 6).

2. Objectives

Aaron Belkin has argued that military masculinity is structured on a series of binaries: "masculinity and femininity, filth and cleanliness, penetrability and impenetrability, dominance and subordination, civilization and barbarism" (2012 173). This article explores especially the first of these, masculinity and femininity, but also other binaries not on the list: honor and dishonor, strength and weakness and their implications for military masculinity. The objective here is to show, following Kristin Hoganson (1998, 2001), that honor and manhood were at stake and help explain the swift action on the part of both Spanish and the American leaders to appropriate significant funds for the war effort. Many historians have claimed that yellow journalism played a significant role in garnering support for US intervention in Cuba1. Others, on the contrary, like Virginia Bouvier (2001), have argued that the role of yellow journalism has been exaggerated and that the decision to go to war rested squarely with the US Congress and President McKinley. Yet even though numerous essays in journals and newspapers encouraged restraint leading up to the declaration of war on April 20, 1898 the fact is that images belittling the Spanish monarch and army in the US, and articles and cartoons debasing US leaders and military in Spain, added fodder to war hawks. In Spain as well as the US once a confrontation seemed inevitable, images sparking an unsavory nationalism contributed to the perception that war was necessary in order to safeguard national honor.

3. Methodology

Nineteenth-century Spanish illustrated magazines reproduced hundreds of engravings of ornate exotics, their bodies covered with coins that advertised their wealth and their availability as icons of felinity (Charnon-Deutsch, 2008). With the popularity of Orientalism in France, culminating in 1893 with the establishment of the Société des Peintres Orientalistes in 1893, illustrated magazines in Spain overflowed with engravings of these highly decorated exotics. The ubiquitous female exotics of the 1890s had no male parallel since the bodies of their male counterparts were not sexually fetishized in the same fashion. Nevertheless, in the 1890s the fetishized female body shared space with a far vaster display of auspicious manhood in the form of Spanish soldiers displaying their honorary medals, epaulets, sashes and other insignia that were at the height of popularity at the same time.

The decorated female bodies offered subtle messages about the meaning of femininity in the late nineteenth century. By examining hundreds of issues of the most widely circulated periodicals, among them Ilustración Española y Americana, Blanco y Negro, and Nuevo Mundo, and also several of the satirical weeklies, especially Gedeón, it becomes clear that gender display was important not only in codifying femininity but in establishing the parameters of admired masculinity. By surveying the equally prominent graphic displays of American military and editorials assessing the war in what were then the most widely circulated magazines such as Colliers and Harpers Weekly, and the satirical journal Judge it is possible to extrapolate the importance of the code of honor and chivalry that predominated during the 1890s in the US. Comparing the graphic images of both countries brings to light the contradictions that abound in the press in times of war.

The work of propaganda during a war is primarily in the form of editorials and news reports. But the moral leverage needed to support any war is also greatly furthered by political cartoons that display a message more swiftly and cynically. A survey of satirical cartoons in popular periodicals reinforces the importance of the appeal to masculine honor. Cartoons were a shorthand way to emphasize the importance of safeguarding national honor or debasing the honor of the enemy. Comparing cartoons on both sides of the Atlantic demonstrates the truth of Kristin Hoganson's argument that "being honorable meant being manly" (Hoganson, 2001: 125). Even more than the ubiquitous photographs flaunting military superiority, cartoons captured the idea that protecting national honor was simultaneously fortifying a sense of masculine honor at a time when it was being challenged by modernity.

4. The Politics of Stereotyping

At key moments a triumphalist illusion gripped the popular press on both sides of the Atlantic, often premised on a skewed conviction of national strength and what Americans like Teddy Roosevelt called the "manly virtues" (1897: 38) necessary to succeed in the struggle with the enemy. As Kristin Hoganson (1998) has argued, gender politics played a substantive role in selling the necessity for war through appeals to American manhood. A perceived crisis in American manhood needs to be factored in to all the other reasons that the US engaged in a war that should not have been. With Civil War (1861-1865) veterans dying out and the volunteer army dwindling, women acting more assertively to gain rights, US politicians feeling 'empire envy' over European expansionism, and unease related to a perceived loss of chivalric ideals, in the US it was thought that new ways of inculcating manhood were necessary. For war hawkers, it was time to rally men behind a cause: "gender helped men from different regions, parties, and walks of life to come together to form a powerful political movement" (Hoganson, 1998: 9). Jingoes argued that strong men made strong citizens, and a strong nation. Early in 1895 Nathanial Hawthorne's son Julian Hawthorne, writing for Collier's Weekly, was blunt in predicting the appreciable benefits that would accrue if America were to wage war. In addition to stimulating industry, war would train men

to habits and deeds of courage and discipline . . . lungs would inhale deeper, and hearts beat stronger. . . The dean muscles of the athlete would replace the flabby tissues of the huckster and pettifogger; and eyes which have of late contemplated the Stars and Stripes with shame and sadness would sparkle with renewed conviction that It was the emblem of the mightiest and most generous nation of the earth (Hawthorne, 1895: 15).

At the end of the war the general consensus according to Russell Alger was that war brought American men "a higher manhood" (1901: 453-54).

American journalists claimed that Spain was a weak and unworthy foe, shown in caricatures as an effeminate figure clearly lacking in manly muscle. Prime Minister Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, regarded as the architect of Spanish foreign policy, was sketched alternately filling the head of the king with fanciful tales of his admirals' exploits or recklessly underestimating American strength. Spain's dreams of help from other European powers were just so many "Castles in Spain" that never materialized. In his sketch by this title, cartoonist Charles Bush pictured a male figure in a decidedly feminine pose fantasizing about international support in its struggle against Uncle Sam [Fig 1].

Meanwhile, in Spain, a concerted campaign was waged in the press to stir patriotic sentiment and support for a war that was not universally popular because of classist conscription policies. The staged, seemingly enthusiastic send-offs of soldiers pictured in Spanish magazines were part of the what José Alvarez Junco describes as an "engaño en el que el gobierno tenía al país" (2001: 587) when in fact there was general indifference to a war that he interprets as "una abulia orgánica de las que preceden a la muerte" (2001: 587). As the country edged closer to war, dozens of cartoons criticized the US for its opportunistic imperialism, juxtaposing a greedy Uncle Sam with a brave Spanish subject, often pictured in traditional dress: bullfighters, Lady Spain, Uncle Sam's counterpart called 'Juan Español', and the ubiquitous Spanish lion were all commandeered to represent a righteous and fearless Spain facing an upstart bully. The Spanish press sold the war through the common techniques of modern advertisement just then emerging: exaggeration, distortions, lies, stereotyping and ever more sophisticated and numerous images that belittled or demonized Spain's enemies.

In this war of images the human body and its gender connotations acquired heightened symbolic meaning. Obesity, immaturity, and lack of muscle connoted not just physical deficiency, but national inadequacy and military impotence. For American caricaturist Charles Nelan, the young king Alfonso XIII, aged twelve in 1898, offered the ideal vehicle to symbolize Spain's gullibility and unreasonable estimation of its prowess and capacity to wage war. Nelan's images of a pre-pubertal Spain were reissued many times and remain the most iconic representations of Spain's military insufficiency of the 1890s. In one image [Fig 2], Prime Minister Sagasta, "The King's Jester" as Nelan dubbed him in the title, fills the King's head with tales of Spanish military successes. In his hand and scattered about are dispatches from General Ramón Blanco and Admiral Cervera, the top military commanders during the war, informing the king that Spain had captured the cities Kalamazoo and Oskosh, inflicted heavy losses on the Spanish fleet, and bombed Chicago and Denver.

Using a different tactic, Grant Hamilton (April 16, 1898), cartoonist for the conservative Republican magazine Judge, depicted Spain in his cartoon "Guilty" as a menacing hulk, his bulging msucles bursting out of his clothes [Fig 3]. Hamilton's monstrous pirate stands amid gravestones marking the victims of past Spanish atrocities, the most prominent toubstones commemorating soldiers who died in the explosion of the American battleship USS Maine in the Havana harbor on February 19, 1898 that launched formal hostilities with the US, and above to the left another stone reminding readers of the 400,000 Cubans who perished of disease and hunger when they were displaced in interment camps by General Valeriano Weyler. Other signs refer to the conquest of Peru the Colonial period, the Inquisition, the torture and murder of Indians by Spain, and persecution of the Moors under Pedro of Spain.

Hamilton's image was apparently so successful that Judge printed a similar version on July 9, only now, instead of a pirate the Spaniard is pictured as a gorilla [Fig 4], identified as "The Spanish Brute," standing amid mutilated bodies of American soldiers and resting his bloodied hand on a tombstone commemorating soldiers who perished in the Maine explosion.

Thus, while Nelan played with the puny physique of Alfonso XIII to score his points, Hamilton's underlying message was that muscular bulk should not be equated with ideal masculinity. On the contrary, the muscles of the brute and gorila mark him as subhuman, lacking in civilized reasoning powers. His were not the "clean muscles" that Julian Hawthorn imagined for American men, but the menacing muscle of the unthinking brute. Both cartoonists were effective in convincing Americans who were promoting the war of the defects of the Spanish enemy by playing with their enemies' bodies and appealing to American men to take action. Like Nelan's popular images that today symbolize for historians the way the press barons successfully inflamed public opinion, the "Spanish brute" had a long afterlife. The blog site Israel Pundit recently refashioned Hamilton's image as "The Musloid Brute" to commemorate the victims of 9/11 and an organization called Omdurman that is who claims to be "defending Western Civilization" has a version in which Hamilton's brute is an ISIS terrorist.

Ironically while dozens of cartoons appealed to Americans after the explosion of the Maine to rise up and defend the nation's honor, cartoonists caricaturized the same concept applied to Spaniards as absurdly quixotic or even villainous. Nelan depicted Spanish honor as a relic of a past, a stratagem to mask self-interest and villainy, while he exalted American humanitarianism in several cartoons. In the US Uncle Sam's face generally is a study in integrity and stature, while the demonized Spaniard resembles sociologist's Cesare Lombroso's criminal type, symbolizing the unsavory character of 'Spanish Honor.' Around the time that Lombroso was arguing that physical types characterized by features resembling lower primates were more prone to criminality, Hamilton offered his own version that conferred the category of criminal on the entire Spanish nation going back to the Middle Ages.

When the battles were over and the Peace treaty signed, a cartoonist for the Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out that Spain had "Very little left but honor" [Fig 5], a meaningless, even laughable concept given the consequences of the war. The battered figure is now less than a man: missing his legs, his left arm, and wearing a patch on his eye, he is barely able to stand on his crutches. In sum, we could characterize the American concept of honor during the Spanish American War as might makes right, and true honor goes to the victor.

4.1. Cartoons Depicting the US in the Spanish Press

In the Spanish press animals and distorted bodies also dehumanized the enemy and appealed to Spaniards' sense of manly honor. Félix Santos (1898: 14) has argued that for the most part the Spanish press was a beacon of moderation in comparison to the yellow journalism of the US press, especially that of The New York Journal and the New York Tribune. To be fair he acknowledges that just before the war was declared the Spanish Press misled its public by assuring that victory was possible despite serious doubts of military leaders, adopting "posiciones patrioteras y castizas con asomos de infantil bravuconería haciendo creer a los lectores que la Escuadra española y el Ejército terminarían con los yankees en cuatro días" (Santos, 1998: 16). However, Santos does not cite examples of this "infantil bravuconería" and he neglects to consider the dozens of cartoons that denigrated American men and appealed to Spanish male honor that played a role in perpetuating a chivalric ideal of manhood that would lead Spain into an impossible war. The War was a culmination of interests not just on the American side: Spain's empire rivalry, economic interests, fear of degeneration and loss of world prestige, together with its overinvestment in a sense of outraged manly honor made relinquishing its colonies to America without a military battle improbable. The response, especially of the satirical press, was to denigrate Americans as a people without honor, lacking in manhood, and indifferent to the military codes of engagement. And, as Ramón Villares attests, during the war, especially after the US intervention, a spigot was opened "de un nacionalismo español muy subido y populachero" (2009: 296).

Next to Uncle Sam the single most frequently used symbol for America during the 1890s was the pig. In ancient Judeo-Christian symbolism swine symbolized hypocrisy, gluttony, and greed, and similarly the pig as used by the Spanish press in the 1890s represented American excess and grossness. It became Uncle Sam's mascot, following him around or being carried by him wherever he went or even anthropomorphized as a man, his masculinity put into question in one image in which he is depicted as a woman strolling arm and arm with an Afro-Cuban insurgent as in figure 6, or, in figure 7 suckling a group of insurgents, his mouth dripping with coins.

Bringing civilization to the oppressed of Cuba and the Philippines became an important pretext Americans used for engaging in a war with Spain, capsulized in the expression "the White Man's burden" after a poem by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling's poem regarded American expansionism with skepticism, but Americans generally took it to mean the responsibility to civilize the world through colonialism. The notion is linked to that of Manifest Destiny, the widely held idea that America had a special mission and duty to colonize the North American continent. In Spain the nationalism and paternalism of these concepts did not escape the cartoonist. The obese William McKinley, president of the "Tocinos Unidos" [Fig 8], hardly seems adequate to the task of shouldering "the white man's burden" of rescuing Cuba from the Spanish brute. The prominence of the American flag painted on the back and stomach of figures 7 and 8 not only signified a slothful, greedy nation, it served as a rebuke to a people whose conspicuous flag waving was already seen as evidence of excessive patriotism and imperialism even while in America displays of the flag were becoming a mandatory emblem of national virility and humanitarianism.

4.2. Playing With Gender

Images that played with gender identity had the potential to draw viewers in with a subtlety belied by the coarseness of the representation, for example, by offering a mixed or multilayered message that deliberately challenged viewers to pause and reflect. José Blanco Coris's "Una Broma pesada" pictures a scene during the Madrid Carnival of 1898 [Fig 9]. A prize has been offered for the most creative "zoological" costume and the commentator suggests that "rayos W," presumably referring to President William McKinley might be the winner, not because of merit but because of political connections and diplomatic expediency. W offers a posy of flowers and a bag of money to a woman dressed as a "maja" during the Madrid Carnival, clearly symbolizing Spain with her miniature crown atop her bun. Though the hat and footwear mark as a man, his gross nude figure at the same time looks slightly feminized, with the suggestion of a buxom and delicate, pointed hooves dangling a bag resembling a lady's purse. Rejecting his offering, the disdainful "chula" says "El que te conozca, que te escuche." In other words, only someone who doesn't know him would be foolish enough to accept his tributes. Insignia on the pig's boots and hat identify him as an American, but in another sense, he is also a Spaniard disguised as an American disguised as an ambiguously gendered pig, which begs the questions what symbolically is being offered, by whom, and what rejected? The woman, "viva representación del espíritu patrio is a somewhat less heroic (and none too beautiful) version of Lady Spain, here not majestically holding forth with the lion by her side as she is sometimes depicted, but a "chula bien plantada" strolling the Prado during Carnival when traditionally women of dubious virtue would advertise their beauty. The date of the image is Feb 19, 1898, three days after the explosion of the USS Maine and a month before the US Congress voted to go to war against Spain. In his rendering Coris satirized the sordid business of American expansionist ambitions in Cuba as well as Spain's savvy rejection of money, but the figures, couched in sexual ambiguity and masquerade, subtly disparage Spaniards as well as Americans and cast an accusing shadow over the business of international strife.

A similar message but with more explicit sexual innuendo appeared on the March 16, 1898 cover of the satirical paper Gedeón, titled "A lo que vamos llegando" [Fig 10]. The caption, "Ya enseña cada cual lo que tiene," alludes again to the contrast between US and Spanish military capacity in the impending conflict. The symbolic organography is clear. The Spaniard gestures arrogantly towards his goods: eggs from Castile, Aragon, Extremadura and Galicia. His swagger, further implied by word "frescos" on the box of eggs from Galicia, signals his wares but also the man's confidence in his manhood, whose adequacy the cartoonist is questioning by counterpoising his American rival whose goods include sacks of money. In his right hand Sam displays what appear to be grenades but that also evoke testicles, in keeping with the connotations evident in the Spaniard's 'goods.' While the Spaniard boasts of his "huevos" (Spanish for eggs and male testicles), the American's goods are bombs and sacks of money. Visible also in the Spaniard's waistband is a dagger, sizeable but hardly a match for Uncle Sam's pistol tucked in his sash and pointing downward towards his sack of money and his groin. The moneybags allude to the US congress's appropriation of fifty million dollars to build up US military strength the week before (March 9), although images satirizing the US crass relation to money were common before that date and formed part of the popular conception of the US in the Spanish press at the time. Gedeón's follow-up cartoon on March 24 (not pictured) shows Uncle Sam with his bag of fifty million dollars in front of a line of other nations lined up to sell him small

While "A lo que vamos llegando" satirizes Spanish bravado, more straightforwardly patriotic images advanced the notion that Spaniards were capable of great deeds when necessary. Several scatological cartoons brought home this idea by suggesting the "sorpresa" Uncle Sam would receive for meddling in Cuban affairs. In figure 11, "La sorpresa del tío Sam", Sam is penetrated in his private parts by the phallic obelisk commemorating the 2nd of May 1808 rebellion against the French occupation. Appeals to Spanish patriotism frequently invoked the War of Independence, reminding citizens of a glorious past in contrast to the upstart US, "un país joven 'sin historia'-según insistía la prensa española escandalizada de que alguien con tal falta de pedigrí pretendiera un hueco en el escenario mundial" (Álvarez Junco 585). After Admiral Montojo's May 1 naval defeat in the Philippines, and later the July 3 naval Battle of Santiago de Cuba, when Admiral Cervera lost a major portion of the Spanish fleet, images such as this that belittled American war prowess vanished, replaced by cartoons denigrating Spain's own leaders and eventually satirizing the Peace terms of December 10 signed in Paris. Still, the idea of Spain's historical integrity in relation to the greedy US bully persisted in the aftermath of the war. A defeat at the hands of a superior military power was bitter proof of the adage "Might makes right," something that according to Edgar Saltus (1898, 19) Spain should know given its military past. Every war throughout history is the same, he wrote, "The lesson which disengages from it is the right of might."

4.3. Borrowed Symbols

What is particularly striking when comparing the jingoist press of the 1890s is the way the media of both counties adapted elements of each others' iconographic tradition to score points, putting into pictures the rhetoric of benevolence, bravery, patriotism and especially masculine bravado, using stereotypes as if they were a kind of free floating, universal currency available for anyone to use. For example, among the symbols of virility and dominance, the bull stands out in Spanish culture. In Spain, various metaphors that associate bulls and bullfighting with a cult of manliness and also ambiguous sexuality abound as Timothy Mitchell has shown. Borrowing the Spanish icon, American cartoons of the 1890s invited readers to imagine the US as either a charging bull or a brave matador, easily victorious over a weak Spain. The sex appeal and bravery of the matador for Spaniards translates in some American cartoons into a view of Spaniards as weakling bullfighters not up to the task of fighting the American bull as in figures 12 and 13. In contrast, a fearless Spanish torero, (General Valeriano Weyler) with his "cape" of 200,000 soldiers [Fig 14], understands that it is a question of Spanish honor to triumph over the Cuban bull no matter how big his horns: "Brindo por la noble España y la vergüenza torera, ó yo doy fin de ese toro, ó á mí me mata la fiera."

4.4. Military Display

Non-ironic images of soldiers on both sides of the Atlantic also circulated subtle messages regarding the outcome of the conflict. Facial expressions, stature, body poses, uniforms and insignia all contributed to the performance of hegemonic, militarized masculinity that communicated subliminal messages about military superiority and prognosis for success. It is interesting that in serious images of soldiers in the US press, muscular physique was not the only symbol of military masculinity. Numerous images stressed discipline, training, and orderliness, fostering the idea of preparedness and military competence. The physical uniformity of subjects in figures 15 and 16, taken from the hundreds of images of the military that dotted Colliers Weekly and other leading weekly and daily newspapers leading up to and during the war, collectively suggested that all was in order in US combat readiness. The tall, straight-legged soldiers of figure 15, showing the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard, advertise their uniformity and discipline. Their sleek bodies resemble tin soldiers that school children collected more than real men. The symmetry is even captured in the lights overhead and the windows in the back of the armory. This is a picture that would make Julian Hawthorne and the many others clamoring for war proud.

The vanishing point of the line of cavalry soldiers in figure 16 also suggests a comforting strength in numbers. The cavalrymen move effortlessly through the brush in a working gait, an impressive display of discipline. Week after week magazines offered dozens of individual military portraits as well, photographs framed in calling card formats, typically nine to a page, which served as an implied assertion both of the magazine's patriotism and US military worthiness. Enlisted men, volunteers, national guardsmen, officers of all ranks shared space on the same page, each accorded the same space. The message was that this was the peoples' army, a fraternal order of men willing to sacrifice their lives to bring 'civilization' to the wretched.

The irony of the ubiquitous display of military personnel is the fact that in 1898 the US had only a small standing army compared with Spain, one filled with new recruits. During the war the US army had to be augmented with national guardsmen most of whom had never seen combat. When in March congress authorized money to build up its military capacity, men from all classes and regions of the country heeded the call. Potential recruits, pictured in images emphasizing their differences of class and physiology [Fig 17], were miraculously transformed overnight into an army of striking uniformity and notable military skills. Their portraits dotted the newspapers and helped to reassure the American public even as some politicians and military leaders in private expressed grave doubt about American battle readiness. The popular perception was that a stint in the army, serving in a war that was surely to be won because Spanish men were, in the words of Senator Redfield Procter (quoted in Linderman, 1974: 42), speaking to a session of congress on March 17, "not at all equal to our men," would be a way of building character. War would unite a divided country and reinvigorate American manhood; something that Teddy Roosevelt and others were suggesting was becoming soft and materialistic.

Senator Procter also gained adherents for the war through appeals to rescue the suffering Cubans on humanitarian grounds, painting a picture of desolation that he saw in his field survey in Cuba earlier that year:

Torn from their homes, with foul earth, foul air, foul water, and foul food or none, what wonder that one-half have died and that one-quarter of the living are so diseased that they can not be saved? . . . Little children are still walking about with arms and chest terribly emaciated, eyes swollen, and abdomen bloated to three times the natural size (Procter, internet)

Images of starving children and ravished women followed in the press, reinforcing the notion that intervention in the war would result in the triumph of chivalrous values. Jingoes urged American men to embrace the chivalric paradigm and rescue the downtrodden masses of Cuba and the Philippines because it was the honorable, the manly thing to do. The US congress came to blows on April 13 when one congressman made an impassioned appeal to the congress to act like men and declare war: "The brawl in the house suggests that congressmen's aggressive personal standards of honor helped make fighting seem a legitimate, if not a desirable, option for the nation" (Hoganson, 1998: 77). In the wake of Procter's speech the jingoes appealed more vociferously to American men's chivalric impulses, an emotional appeal that was easily met when nearly one million men rushed to volunteer. Not to heed the cries of starving Cubans would be, jingoes suggested and many Americans believed, to sacrifice American honor. As moderate congressman Mahlon Pitney (quoted in Hoganson, 1998: 69) suggested, peace was preferable but only if it could be obtained with honor: "We lay a solemn emphasis upon the word honor. Honor comes first."

Voices challenging hawkish pleas also appealed to the notion of true manhood. Retired statesman Carl Schuz (1898, 219) in several essays for Harpers Weekly urged caution and diplomacy and deemed it "intensely ludicrous" that American manhood should be equated with belligerency, scoffing at the idea "... that a nation needs a war from time to time to prevent it from becoming effeminate, to shake it up from demoralizing materialism, and to elevate the popular heart for awakening heroic emotions of patriotic self sacrifice." Many voices were raised in agreement with Schuz, including that of President McKinley who only reluctantly and after intense pressure from Congress issued the Declaration of War on April 19. But by that time the impression had spread to every sector of American society that American honor was at stake and that war was inevitable and even desirable since a positive outcome would reap numerous benefits, not just commercial or humanitarian, but in terms of the manhood of its citizens.

Spain also exhibited evidence of its soldierly worth in the 1890s illustrated magazines. Blanco y Negro's cartoonist Ramón Cilla riffed on the convention of exotic women regaled in coins that I studied in Hold That Pose by dressing the Treasury Minister Juan Navarro Reverter as a Cantabrian peasant woman with rings of coins around his neck, a not so subtle message debasing Spain's financial solvency by imagining the minister as a woman [Fig 18]. Prime Minister Cánovas had just sanctioned the emergency minting of silver coins to help finance the Cuban war. The caption reads: "iY hay los que nos llaman pobres! iPobres! iUna cornucopia!" As I wrote in commenting on this image, "thinking Spain because it was minting coins was as ridiculous as judging a peasant woman rich because of the coins she wore around her neck," (Charnon-Deutsch, 2008: 35), to which we could add in the context of the subject here: depicting a top minister as a woman said volumes about satirists' way of turning men into a laughing stock.

The condecorated officers were like a male album of past achievements, and, I suggest, their frequency implied the promise of future successes. While US newspapers overflowed with images of enlisted men and soldiers of all ranks, thanks to the ideal of the military as a fraternal order, in Spain, the most common image was that of a decorated officer. The period of the Restoration saw a proliferation of honorary medals, much to the consternation of some who feared they were becoming so common as to diminish their exceptionality (Simón-Alegre, 2011: 132). Magazines captured the craze with the same gusto as it followed the fetishized female exotic with her chest laden with coins. During its struggle with Cuban insurgents, and especially during the 1898 war with the US, these images offered a comforting display of the nation's military. How could the impeding struggle not go well with so many gallant men, their chests covered with the evidence of their previous service and exploits in the military arts?

Popular periodicals like Blanco y Negro and Nuevo Mundo excelled in this comforting display of present and past military heroes and brave soldiers engaged in battle in Cuba. Ilustración Española y Americana, the premier illustrated magazine at the time, also filled its pages with decorated soldiers in full military dress, some on the cover as those of figure 19, or sharing space with a photoengraving of a ship from the Spanish fleet, an embarkment scene at the docks, or a battle reenactment. If the US was boasting its dubious combat readiness, Spain was selling the idea of its experience and military might. A sampling of images from the covers of Ilustración Española y Americana shows Spain's worthies in all their military splendor. The profuseness of the military display conformed to a certain implied narrative about Spanish military adequacy at a time when top military and political officials were not at all confident about success in any military engagement with the ever more powerful and wealthy US.

5. Conclusion

In the Spanish press the display of Spanish military like the officers of Figure 19 was comforting in that it symbolized experience and battle readiness, while a similar survey of the military in US press in Figures 15 and 16 connoted a preparedness that was far from realistic. In the cartoon images studied here, playing with gender ambiguity was used to to denigrate the enemy and fortify the convictions of those who would need to fight in and support the war. Depicting the enemy dressed in women's clothes as in Figure 6, petulant children as Nelan's cartoons of Alfonso XIII, swains and goons like the egg merchant of Figure 10, as men who failed to 'measure up' to the masculine ideal sold confidence in the righteousness of the cause on both sides of the Atlantic. What it is possible to conclude from this survey of images, both serious and comical, about the War of 1898 is twofold: 1) that images have more influence not only in terms of their intended target, but in ways that reflect the sexual malaise of Western modernity and 2) that images can be detrimental to diplomacy that alone can prevent wars.

Wars have a way of staying with a nation for a long time after they are ostensibly ended. The US is still swallowing the bitter bill of its botched 'moral missions' of the 1890s, as Cuba and Puerto Rico remain to this day a thorn in American politics. Spain as well suffered in many ways (economically and politically) its botched dealings with its last colonies in the Americas. Ways of imagining soldiers and politicians have persevered as well, now more crude and explicit than in the past but with similarly coded messages. The title of Arnaud Imatz's article on the concept of a just war "De Mackinley à Obama: rien de nouveau sous le soleil" (From Mackinley to Obama, nothing new under the sun) is a fitting conclusion to this essay. The images today that demonize men are more crude and explicit than ever but with similarly coded messages in which gender is still at issue. John Berger claims that nearly all political cartoons inspire disgust (2013: 29), and this is certainly the case today even more so than in the past. A glance at the world-wide web reveals hundreds of cartoons of politicians and soldiers whose masculinity is challenged by being dressed as women, converted into animals, physically misshapen, "debased" in some way. They still inspire disgust, as Berger suggests, and as works of propaganda they still rely on certain conventions that are sadly familiar to justify war.

Footnote

1 The term Yellow Journalism surfaced in the 1890s In the US to characterize sensational and exaggerated journalism. The term was coined by Erwin Wardman, editor of the New York Press to refer to the fierce competition between Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal.

References

6. Bibliography

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Álvarez Junco, J. (2001). Mater dolorosa. La idea de España en el siglo XIX. Madrid: Taurus.

Belkin, A. (2012). Bring Me Men. Military Masculinity and the Benign Façade of American Empire, 1898-2001. New York: Columbia University Press.

Berger, J. (2013). Understanding a Photograph. Edited by G. Dyer. New York: Aperture.

Bouvier, V., Editor (2001). Whose America? The War of 1898 and the Battles to Define the Nation. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.

Charnon Deutsch, L. (2008). Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century Spanish Press. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Hawthorne, J. (1895). "Hawthorne's Vitascope." Collier's Weekly. March, 15, p. 15.

Hoganson. K. (1998). Fighting for American Manhood. How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hoganson, K. (2001). "'Honor Comes First': The Imperatives of Manhood in the Congressional Debate over War." In Whose America? The War of 1898 and the Battles to Define the Nation. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, pp. 123-148.

Imatz, A. "De Mackinley à Obama: rien de nouveau sous le soleil (sur l'outil de propagande lors de la guerre hispano-américaine de 1898)." Internet source: http://cerclearistote.com/arnaud-imatz-de-mc-kinkey-1898-a-obama-2014-rien-de-nouveau-sousle-soleil/

Linderman, G. F. (1974). The Mirror of War. American Society and the Spanish-American War. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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Procter, R. (1898). "Cuban Reconcentration Policy and its Effects-A Speech" March 17. http://www.spanamwar.com/proctorspeech.htm

Roosevelt, T. (1897). American Ideals and Other Essays, Social and Political. New York: Putnam's Sons.

Saltus, E. (1898). Colliers Weekly, May 7. 21.5, p. 19.

Schuz, C. (1898). Harpers Weekly Mar 6. 40.2150, p. 219.

Santos, F. (1998). 1898. La prensa y la guerra de Cuba. Bilbao: Asociación Julián Zugazagoitia.

Simón-Alegre, A. (2011). Oficiales y soldados en la Restauración española (1873-1923). Integración y exclusión. El modelo de masculinidad castrense. Madrid: Universidad Complutense.

Villares, R. (2009). Historia de España. Restauración y dictadura. Madrid: Marcial Pons.

Appendix

ANEXOS

Table of Images

Fig 1 "Castles In Spain". Charles Green Bush. Cartoons of the War of 1898 with Spain. Chicago: Belford, Middlebrook & Co., 1898, n.p.

Fig 2 "The King's Jester". Charles Nelan. Cartoons of Our War with Spain. New York: Frederick Stokes, 1898, n.p.

Fig 3 "Guilty". Grant Hamilton. Judge 34.861 (April 16, 1898), n.p.

Fig 4 "Spanish Brute." Grant Hamilton. Judge 35.873 (July 9, 1898), n. p.

Fig 5 "Very Little Left But Honor" Piladelphia Inquirer. In Cartoons of the War of 1898 with Spain. Chicago: Belford, Middlebrook & Co., 1898, n.p.

Fig 6 "Matrimoinio morganático". Gedeón 3.81 (May 27, 1897), last page.

Fig 7 "Una mala bestia". La Campana de Gracia. 27.1408 (May 16, 1896), cover.

Fig 8 "Documento importante". El Gato Negro 1 (June 4, 1898), 11.

Fig 9 "Una broma pesada". Blanco y Negro 8.355 (Feb 19, 1898), n.p.

Fig 10 "A lo que vamos llegando". n.a. Gedeón 4.123 (March 16, 1898), cover.

Fig 11 "La sorpresa del tío Sam". n.a. Gedeón 4.125 (Mar 31, 1898), cover.

Fig 12 "Time to 'take the bull by the horns'", Bartholomew, C. L. Minneapolis Journal. In Cartoons of the War of 1898 with Spain. Chicago: Belford, Middlebrook & Co., 1898, n.p.

Fig 13 "End of the Spanish American Bullfight". Grant Hamilton. Judge 34.862 (Apr. 23, 1898), n.p.

Fig 14 "Brindo por la noble España y la vergüenza torera, ó yo doy fin de ese toro, ó á mí me mata la fiera". Blanco y Negro 6.285 (Oct. 17, 1896), n.p.

Fig 15 "Our Citizen Soldiers-Review of the Seventh Regiment N G N Y by MajorGeneral Roe. April 6, 1898." T. Theletrep. Harpers Weekly 42.2157 (Apr. 22, 1898), 296-297.

Fig 16 "With the Regulars at Fort Tampa Florida. 9th US Calvary (Colored). Skirmishing Through the Pines". Frederic Remington. Harpers Weekly 42.2161 (May 21, 1898), 492-93.

Fig 17 (partial ) "Naval Activity-Fitting out Vessels and enlisting Crews for the North Atlantic Fleet Types of Applicants for Enlistment". Harpers Weekly 42.2151 (Mar. 12, 1898), n.p.

Fig 18 "Conste que no somos pobres". Luis Rollo Villanova. Blanco y Negro 7 (Mar. 27, 1897), n.p.

Fig 19 Ilustración Española y Americana. 39.42 (15 Nov., 1895); 39.45 (Dec. 18, 1898); 42.19 (May 24, 1898); 42.4 (Jan. 30, 1898),