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i

Damn Great Empires!

ii
iii

Damn Great Empires!

William James and the Politics
of Pragmatism

Alexander Livingston

1
iv

1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© Oxford University Press 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​P ublication Data

Names: Livingston, Alexander, author.
Title: Damn great empires! : William James and the politics of pragmatism /
Alexander Livingston.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016001445 (print) | LCCN 2016014049 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190237158 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190237165 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780190237172 (Updf)
Subjects: LCSH: James, William, 1842–1910—Political and social views. |
United States—Territorial expansion—History—19th century. |
Philippines—Annexation to the United States. | Imperialism—Moral and ethical aspects.
Classification: LCC B945.J24 L58 2016 (print) | LCC B945.J24 (ebook) | DDC 320.092—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016001445

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America

Publication of this book was supported by The Hull Memorial Publication Fund
of Cornell University.
v

To my parents.
vi

My political philosophy evidently belongs to the future; certainly

not to the past or present.
—​W illiam James to Theodora
Sedgwick, December 25th, 1899 (C 9:108)
vii

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xiii

Introduction 1
Chapter 1 The Political Uses of William James 24
Chapter 2 Cravings and Consequences 53
Chapter 3 Taming the Strenuous Life 77
Chapter 4 Stuttering Conviction 103
Chapter 5 Tragedy, History, and Democratic Faith 126
Conclusion 153

Notes 165
Works Cited 205
Index 227
viii
ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

L
“ ife,” writes William James, “is in the transitions as much as the terms
connected” (WPE 43). So much more so the life of a book. The years
spent writing this book have been ones of transitions, moving across bor-
ders and between institutions. Along the way, teachers, colleagues, and
friends have generously helped connect the terms.
My first debt is owed to Kai Nielsen at Concordia University who intro-
duced me to pragmatism and has remained a model of politically engaged
and intellectually serious scholarship. In good pragmatic spirit, Kai taught
me that philosophers ought to know something about the world and steered
me towards graduate school in political science. I had the good fortune to
study with exceptional teachers at the University of Toronto. First among
these is Simone Chambers, who courageously supervised an unconven-
tional dissertation on William James and political theory. Simone trusted
my intellectual hunches and eventually taught me to trust myself. Ryan
Balot’s work on democratic courage and Peggy Kohn’s studies of empire
both left a deep impact on my intellectual formation. Melissa Williams
created a wonderful interdisciplinary community at the Center for Ethics,
where a fellowship allowed me to finish the dissertation on time.
Two communities of scholars proved especially influential in giving
this book its final form. Jane Bennett generously agreed to host me as
a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. Her support and in-
tellectual adventurousness have been constant sources of inspiration. Bill
Connolly and Sam Chambers both pushed me to think about pluralism
in new ways. Their feedback and guidance helped me see the bigger pic-
ture. I completed this book at Cornell University, nurtured by the intellec-
tual support and provocation of colleagues, students, and friends. Thanks
x

to Richard Bensel, Jason Frank, Jill Frank, Isaac Kramnick, Aziz Rana,
Diane Rubenstein, and Anna Marie Smith for their friendship and for
keeping things exciting in Ithaca. A workshop on an early version of the
manuscript hosted by the Department of Government in the fall of 2013
marked a turning point for the project. My colleagues, along with Colin
Koopman and George Shulman, read the entire manuscript and provided
me with the critical insights I needed to pull it all together. Last but not
least, I want to thank the graduate students I have had the good fortune to
learn from at Cornell. The curiosity, intelligence, and creativity of students
in my seminars on pluralism and pragmatism continually remind me of
what a joy the life of the mind can be.
Numerous scholars, colleagues, and friends have graciously commented
on parts of this manuscript or shared their insights in conversations with
me over the years. The book is wiser for their contributions, although
its shortcomings remain strictly my own. I would like to thank Ermine
Algier, Willy Blomme, Marcus Boon, Steve Bush, James Campbell,
Terrell Carver, Paul Croce, Jennifer Culbert, Adam Culver, Stefan Dolgert,
Kathy Ferguson, Kennan Ferguson, Nathan Gies, Loren Goldman, Alex
Gourevitch, David Gutterman, Bonnie Honig, Dustin Howes, Murad Idris,
Duncan Ivison, Nicolas Jabko, Desmond Jagmohan, Isaac Kamola, Nick
Kompridis, James Kloppenberg, Robert Lacey, Patchen Markell, Tracy
McNulty, Andrew Murphy, Emily Nacol, Davide Panagia, Melvin Rogers,
Adam Sheingate, James Tully, Chip Turner, Drew Walker and Hannah
Wells. Two scholars are owed special thanks for their support throughout
this process. David Rondel and Colin Koopman have been regular interloc-
utors on all things pragmatism for many years. This book would not have
been possible without their acumen and encouragement. Another group
of scholars and friends due special recognition are Kiran Banerjee, Inder
Marwah, Mihaela Mihai, Jakeet Singh, and Serdar Tekin. They have been
putting up with James and me graciously since graduate school. Inder, in
particular, has done a yeoman’s service in reading too many drafts over too
many years. I owe him big time.
The chapters of this book have benefited from the critical feedback
they received at various conferences and workshops. Thanks are due to
hosts and audiences at University de Coimbra, Cornell University, Goethe
University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Montreal, Northwestern
University, University of Oregon, and York University, as well as audi-
ences at the American Political Science Association, the Western Political
Science Association, the Association for Political Theory, the Canadian
Political Science Association, and the American Academy of Religion

x | Acknowledgments
xi

conferences. Additional thanks are owed to the conversations about

pragmatism I have been lucky to take part in through the Society for the
Advancement of American Philosophy, where I have enjoyed playing the
part of the disciplinary outsider.
Research support was made available through a postdoctoral fellowship
from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada,
as well as from the Society for the Humanities and the Department of
Government at Cornell University. This book would not have been possi-
ble without the diligent work of librarians and archivists at Olin Library
and the Carl A. Kroch Library at Cornell University; Houghton Library,
Pusey Library, and Robbins Library at Harvard University; Thomas Fisher
Rare Books Library at the University of Toronto; the W. E. B. Du Bois
Papers at University of Massachusetts Amherst; and the YIVO Institute
for Jewish Research in New York. Thanks to Nolan Bennett and Vijay
Phulwani for their research assistance in preparing the final manuscript
for publication.
Angela Chnapko at Oxford University Press guided the book through
the editorial process skillfully. Her patience and enthusiasm have been a
great boon in working through revisions. I am indebted to the detailed
comments on the manuscript Angela procured for the Press from two
very attentive and critical reviewers, one of whom—​Jeanne Morefield—​I
know to thank in person. An earlier version of ­chapter 4 previously ap-
peared as “Stuttering Conviction: Commitment and Hesitation in James’s
Oration to Robert Gould Shaw,” Contemporary Political Theory 12, no. 4
(2013): 255–​76. I thank the journal for permission to republish portions of
the article here in revised form.
Lastly, I thank my family. My deepest gratitude is to Merike Andre-​
Barrett. Merike has been there through all the transitions, and there
would have been no terms to connect without her love, humor, and con-
stant companionship. I thank her for all the adventures so far and for the
ones still to come. I dedicate this book to my loving parents, Barbara
Landy-​Livingston and Paul Livingston, who were my first teachers and
remain my best ones.

Acknowledgments | xi
xii
xiii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

A ll in-​text citations refer to The Works of William James published by

Harvard University Press unless otherwise noted. Citations refer to
abbreviation, followed by volume number (citing multivolume works), with
pages cited following the colon. For example: (PP 2:345).

Edited Works

C The Correspondence of William James, ed. Ignas K. Skrupskelis

and Elizabeth M. Berkeley, 12 vols. (Charlottesville: University
Press of Virginia, 1992–​2004).
ECR Essays, Comments, and Reviews, ed. Ignas K. Skrupskelis
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
EP Essays in Philosophy, ed. Frederick Burkhardt (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1978).
EPs Essays in Psychology, ed. Frederick Burkhardt (Cambridge,
MA: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
ERM Essays in Religion and Morality, ed. Frederick Burkhardt
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
LWJ The Letters of William James, ed. Henry James, 2 vols.
(Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920).
M Manuscript Lectures, ed. Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).
xiv

Books by William James

ERE Essays in Radical Empiricism, ed. Fredson Bowers and Ignas

K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1976 [1912]).
MT The Meaning of Truth, ed. Fredson Bowers (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1975 [1909]).
P Pragmatism, ed. Fredson Bowers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1975 [1907]).
PP The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1981 [1890]).
PU A Pluralistic Universe, ed. Fredson Bowers (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1977 [1907]).
SPP Some Problems of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1979 [1911]).
TT Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of
Life’s Ideals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983
[1899]).
TWTB The Will to Believe, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers,
and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1979 [1897]).
VRE The Varieties of Religious Experience (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1985 [1903]).

Essays by William James

AQ “Address on the Philippines Question” [1903], in ECR.

AS “The Absolute and the Strenuous Life” [1906], in MT.
DD “The Dilemma of Determinism” [1884], in TWTB.
DF “Diary of French Naval Officer: Observations at Manila”
[1900], in ECR.
DN “Drafts and Notes for Addresses to Graduate Clubs”
[1902–​1906], in M.
EC “Address at the Emerson Centenary” [1903], in ERM.
EL “Epidemic of Lynching” [1903], in ECR.
GME “Great Men and Their Environment” [1880], in TWTB.
GR “The Gospel of Relaxation” [1899], in TT.
GRO “Governor Roosevelt’s Oration” [1899], in ECR.
HS “The Hidden Self” [1890], in EPs.

xiv | List of Abbreviations

xv

II “The Importance of Individuals” [1890], in TWTB.

LWL “Is Life Worth Living?” [1895], in TWTB.
MEW “On the Moral Equivalent of War” [1910], in ERM.
MPML “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” [1891], in TWTB.
OCB “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” [1899], in TT.
PA “The Philippines Again” [1899], in ECR.
PB “Remarks at the Peace Banquet” [1904], in ERM.
PC “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results”
[1898], in P.
PhD “The PhD Octopus” [1903], in ECR.
PMI “G. Papini and the Pragmatist Movement in Italy”
[1906], in EP.
PN “The Problem of the Negro” [1909], in ECR.
PQ “The Philippine Question” [1899], in ECR.
PT “The Philippine Tangle” [1899], in ECR.
RGS “Robert Gould Shaw: An Oration” [1897], in ERM.
SDM “Remarks on Spencer’s Definition of Mind as Correspondence”
[1878], in EP.
SN “A Strong Note of Warning Regarding the Lynching Epidemic”
[1903], in ECR.
SR “The Sentiment of Rationality” [1882/​1897], in TWTB.
SV “The Social Value of the College Bred” [1907], in ECR.
TD “Thomas Davidson: Individualist” [1905], in ECR.
TEC “Two English Critics” [1908], in MT.
TH “True Harvard” [1903], in ECR.
WMLS “What Makes Life Significant?” [1899], in TT.
WPE “A World of Pure Experience” [1904], in ERE.
WTB “The Will to Believe” [1897], in TWTB.

List of Abbreviations | xv
xvi
xvii

Damn Great Empires!

xviii
1

Introduction

I. James’s Nachlass

To mark the centenary of the great American philosopher William James

(1842–​1910), the American Political Science Association proposed to hold
a panel at its thirty-​eighth annual meeting in 1943 on the topic of prag-
matism and politics. The prodigious scholarship of thinkers such as John
Dewey and George Herbert Mead had placed pragmatism—​the experi-
mental and collaborative philosophy of inquiry that James popularized in
the early 1900s—​at the intellectual center of progressive political thought
in the early decades of the twentieth century. The panel, titled “Pragmatism
and the Current Political Situation,” aimed to bring together prominent
political scientists to discuss the insights James’s writings could offer on
contemporary world politics. The organizers were caught by surprise,
however, when the invited speakers declined to participate. As historian
of political thought George Sabine explained his reluctance: “The great
difficulty is that so far as I can see James had no political philosophy.”1
In response to Sabine’s swift rejection, the conference’s program di-
rector, Henry W. Stoke, reached out to Horace Kallen to inquire whether
or not a panel on James and political science was intellectually viable.2
Kallen had studied under James at Harvard University and consid-
ered himself something of a philosophical heir to his former teacher,
having been tasked to prepare James’s posthumous Some Problems of
Philosophy.3 Kallen’s response was not simply supportive; it was enthusi-
astic. James “might be treated as a fundamental philosopher of liberalism
in American life and thought,” Kallen declared. The American Political
Science Association would do well to reconsider his political legacy in
2

relation to the “revival of liberalism” currently taking place. Kallen di-

rected Stokes to the rich material in James’s Nachlass, where he “has said
enough things having political connections.”4
This Nachlass Kallen mentions is a reference to the collection of notes,
correspondence, occasional essays, and editorials James composed in the
final decade of his life in reaction to the Spanish-​American War and its
imperial aftermath. As US infantry landed in Puerto Rico, Guam, and
the Philippines in June 1898, James—​by this time a famed psychologist
and renowned professor—​set foot into the inaugural meeting of the New
England Anti-​Imperialist League at Boston’s Faneuil Hall.5 Over the fol-
lowing months, James would undergo a sort of political awakening that
transformed the celebrated scholar into a prominent voice of American
anti-​imperialism. The American public read his stinging indictments
of militarism and jingoism in newspapers such as the Boston Evening
Transcript, the Springfield Republican, and the New York Evening Post.
His hatred of empire would bring him to correspond with a transnational
community of political actors and thinkers, ranging from Boston’s blue-​
blooded mugwumps to Tolstoian labor radicals, and from the Russian
radical Maxim Gorky to William Cameron Forbes, commissioner of com-
merce and police of the American colonial government in the Philippines.6
As James confesses in one of his many epistolary salvos against impe-
rialism, “I want all great empires, including our own, to come to grief”
(C 9:264–​65). In 1903 James was named vice president of the Massachusetts
chapter of the American Anti-​Imperialist League, the national successor
to the New England Anti-​Imperialist League, a position he held until his
death in 1910. From 1905 to 1907 James held the additional role of vice
president of the Filipino Progress Association, the purpose of which was to
lobby for Filipino interests in the transition from military to civilian rule.7
And in the essay he would repeatedly revise over the last four years of his
life, “The Moral Equivalent of War,” he squarely confronts the problem of
American militarism and the need to control its destructive power on the
global stage.8
This final decade of James’s life was a political one. This period is
better remembered, however, for the intellectual works that launched him
to international fame as the voice of a bold, new movement in philoso-
phy. Between the outbreak of the war and his death, the philosophical
ideas James had been articulating in the previous decades exploded into a
series of major works that would fundamentally transform the landscape
of American scholarship and intellectual culture in the twentieth cen-
tury: The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), Pragmatism (1907),

2 | Damn Great Empires!

3

A Pluralistic Universe (1909), The Meaning of Truth (1909), and the

posthumous Some Problems of Philosophy (1911) and Essays in Radical
Empiricism (1912). These works did more than simply redefine the terms
of professional philosophy in the United States; they articulated an entire
“phase of American life-​experience,” as John Dewey memorably describes
James’s philosophy.9
Under the shadow of James’s monumental contributions to the fields
of philosophy, psychology, and religious studies, his anti-​ imperialist
Nachlass appears as a minor fragment in his broader corpus. Sabine’s
view remains received wisdom—​that these works did not bear “any really
close relationship to [James’s] philosophy.” Echoing the judgment of Ralph
Barton Perry’s Pulitzer Prize–​winning 1935 biography, The Thought and
Character of William James, Sabine confidently asserts that James’s anti-​
imperialism was merely the consequence of his sensitive temperament
given free rein during a period of doctor-​prescribed bed rest that just hap-
pened to overlap with the outbreak of the war.10 His anti-​imperialism, it
would seem, was a feverish outburst rather than a considered reflection on
his times.
After months of correspondence Sabine agreed, reluctantly, to partici-
pate on the panel, only after being assured that he could present a paper
on the political significance of pragmatism broadly rather than James’s po-
litical philosophy in particular. The other speaker scheduled to participate
on the panel was Max Eastman. A former revolutionary socialist turned
vociferous anti-communist, Eastman’s proposed paper represents a very
different response to the question of the political significance of James’s
pragmatism. Eastman had attended James’s pragmatism lectures at
Columbia University in 1907 while writing his dissertation under Dewey’s
supervision. Despite this intellectual pedigree Eastman no longer counted
himself a believer in pragmatism, and his proposed paper, “Pragmatism
and the Totalitarian Will to Believe,” would try to explain why. As Eastman
explains to Stoke in a letter outlining his proposed talk, the paper would
examine the seeming contradiction between Dewey’s “clear-​headed” op-
position to “every kind of totalitarian infiltration into the United States”
and the fact that “pragmatism in its exaltation of impulse does seem some-
what akin to the totalitarian rejection of the intellect.” James, he wagers,
would likely have shared Dewey’s political opposition to totalitarianism,
“although I am not so sure.”11
Eastman was not alone during this period in seeing pragmatism as shar-
ing some sort of elective affinity with the totalitarianism of Mussolini,
Hitler, and Stalin. Il Duce himself had cited James’s doctrine of the will

Introduction | 3
4

to believe to a British journalist a decade earlier as one of the sources for

fascism’s consequentialist philosophy of action.12 Sabine and Eastman’s
respective judgments of the politics of James’s pragmatism—​either as apo-
litical or as unwittingly laying the intellectual groundwork for the terrors
of modern totalitarianism—​shed light on Kallen’s enthusiastic support
for a panel that would commemorate James as a “fundamental” figure of
American liberalism. At a commemorative event held at the New School
for Social Research in November 1941, Kallen delivered a paper titled
“Remembering William James.” “To me,” Kallen pronounces, “the singu-
larity of William James remains his call to arms in the immemorial war
of freedom for every man, of which the present crisis is but the present
phase.” In response to the slander of scholars like Eastman who would
make James a “scapegoat” for the rise of modern totalitarianism, Kallen
reminds his audience of the essentially liberal spirit of James’s thought.
Pragmatism, after all, was dedicated to none other than John Stuart Mill.
James was ultimately a “metaphysical democrat” who forever remained
attentive to the dangers philosophical dogmatism and absolutism posed to
the pursuit of individual freedom.13 A nation at war would do well to recall
James as a model of the courage demanded by liberalism’s fighting creed.
The proposed panel, “Pragmatism and the Current Political Situation,”
never took place. The American Political Science Association canceled
their 1943 meeting in response to the federal government’s request that
citizens limit nonessential transportation as the nation mobilized for war.14
I include this short vignette from behind the scenes of an academic con-
ference three-​quarters of a century ago to illustrate some of the persist-
ent interpretive challenges facing this book’s central thesis: namely, that
William James was an important and innovative theorist of politics. Four
challenges in particular stand out. The first is the common denial that James
had any substantial concern with politics. Sabine’s summary dismissal of
the idea that James could be considered a political philosopher has found
innumerable restatements over the ensuing years. James’s involvement in
the anti-​imperialist movement is frequently overlooked in major studies of
his life and thought. Where it is acknowledged, it is typically decentered
as a chapter of his personal life unrelated to his philosophy.15 “In regards
to politics,” writes Cornel West in his influential study of the development
of the pragmatist tradition, “James had nothing profound or even provoc-
ative to say.”16 James’s editorials, essays, and letters on empire that Kallen
claims as a rich source for James’s political thought have been character-
ized as “few, scattered, and more on the order of desultory meditations
than systematic arguments.”17 James penned no recognizable treatise on

4 | Damn Great Empires!

5

political theory and seldom engaged the works of major figures in the his-
tory of political thought.
Second is the contested history of interpretation surrounding the po-
litical meaning of American pragmatism. The contemporary perception
of pragmatism as a distinctively American and democratic philosophy is
intertwined with an ideological history of canon construction in the de-
cades following James’s death. Canons are always made up retrospectively
to give shape to the past for purposes of the present. The thinkers cele-
brated as the founding figures of classical pragmatism—​Charles Sanders
Peirce, William James, and John Dewey—​shared overlapping philosoph-
ical methods along with deep disagreements. James traced the origins of
pragmatism back to the influence of Peirce, but at the same time defined
it as merely “a new name for some old ways of thinking,” with roots in
British empiricism and similarities to the “anti-​intellectualism” of Henri
Bergson’s philosophy of lived duration and Giovanni Papini’s magical na-
tionalism.18 Peirce famously renamed his own position “pragmaticism” in
response to James’s popularization of pragmatism, declaring that it had
become time to find a word “ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers.”19
And Dewey shied away from both the scientism of Peirce and the nominal-
ism of James to articulate his naturalized Hegelianism as “instrumental-
ism.”20 These divisions, and many others, are obscured by the posthumous
canonization of these three thinkers as the holy trinity of a national tradi-
tion of liberal democratic philosophy. For example, the opposition between
James as a “fundamental” liberal or as the unwitting intellectual vanguard
of the coming century’s totalitarian terror, figures the meaning of pragma-
tism within the terms of political struggles that bear little resemblance to
the arguments over US imperialism that concerned James. Acknowledging
the anachronism of both Kallen’s and Eastman’s posthumous conscrip-
tions of James as exemplar of American liberalism or its antithesis is not
to dismiss these interpretations as inconsequential, however. It is rather a
reminder that any study of James’s political thought must constantly nego-
tiate the politicized reception history that frames both past narratives and
current perceptions in subtle, enduring ways.
Third is the long shadow cast by the towering figure of John Dewey.
In an enormous corpus of work that spans the late nineteenth century to
the middle decades of the twentieth century, Dewey explored the social
and political implications of pragmatism’s liberation of inquiry from
its eternal search for first principles, fixed forms, or timeless founda-
tions. Dewey’s vision of philosophy as the methodological application of
social intelligence to common problems led to major contributions in the

Introduction | 5
6

development of American political thought in works including German

Philosophy and Politics (1915), The Public and Its Problems (1927),
Individualism Old and New (1930), Liberalism and Social Action (1935),
and Freedom and Culture (1939), to name only a few. Furthermore,
Dewey’s reconstruction of philosophy brought the method of intelli-
gence out of the academy and into the public sphere in his role as a
public intellectual. Given both the intellectual scope and historical influ-
ence of Dewey’s political thought, it is unsurprising that pragmatism has
become synonymous with Deweyan democracy in contemporary politi-
cal theory.21 Accordingly, political theorists have tended to view James’s
political thought—​when they recognize it at all—​as amounting to little
more than an incomplete and immature statement of Dewey’s democratic
theory.22
Fourth, and perhaps most challenging, concerns how we ought to un-
derstand the relationship between James’s pragmatism as a philosophical
method, articulated in popular works and public lectures, and his writ-
ings on politics, which are brief, fragmentary, and typically unpublished.
Sabine and generations of scholars since have simply denied any intel-
lectual link connecting James’s writing on empire to his philosophy and
psychology. Kallen and Eastman in their own ways look beyond James’s
encounter with American empire to find the purported politics of James’s
thought in the inferred implications of his pragmatism, pluralism, and
radical empiricism. Readings of James as the intellectual forerunner of
Dewey’s democratic theory similarly ignore these writings to draw out
the untapped implications of his ethics and theory of truth. This displace-
ment of James’s anti-​imperialist Nachlass is continued in recent works that
aim to rehabilitate James as a resource for political theory. Joshua Miller’s
Democratic Temperament approaches James’s work as “implicitly related
to politics” to shed light on the paradoxes and possibilities of liberal de-
mocracy at the close of the twentieth century. To make explicit what re-
mains implicit in pragmatism, Miller proposes to “translate” James’s phi-
losophy “into the language of democratic politics” rather than consider it
as political in its own terms.23 Similarly, William Connolly and Kennan
Ferguson have brought renewed attention to James’s pluralism for the “in-
timate connection” it draws “between character, history, and philosophy,”
so as to open the way to the power of ideas to actively reshape and redirect
ethical energies that rationalist approaches to morality disparage to their
detriment.24 To the extent James’s writings on imperialism figure into such
approaches, and they seldom do, they serve as illustrations of the practical
political meaning of his pluralist philosophy.

6 | Damn Great Empires!

7

This book represents a radically different approach to the study of

James’s political thought. Following Kallen’s advice to focus on James’s
Nachlass, Damn Great Empires! takes James’s anti-​imperialism seriously
as a lens for rethinking the meaning of his pluralistic pragmatism. More
than a minor distraction or an illustration of the untapped political impli-
cations of his philosophy, this book takes James’s speeches, essays, notes,
and correspondence on empire as keys for unlocking the political signifi-
cance of his writings on truth, religion, and metaphysics. By resituating
these works in the intellectual and discursive context of Pacific imperial-
ism and Gilded Age political thought, we come to see James as more than
an apolitical scholar, a harbinger of fascism, or a proto-​Deweyan demo-
crat. We discover instead an anti-​imperialist thinker who was profoundly
attuned to the psychological and existential dimensions of politics. The
master theme of Dewey’s political thought is democracy as a way of life,
a conception of politics as perpetual renewal and reform. James’s politi-
cal vision, by contrast, reorients political thought towards the problem of
empire as a way of life. I borrow this expression from William Appleman
Williams to denote the deep roots of imperial expansion in the institution-
alized patterns of thought, language, and conduct ingrained in American
political culture.25 The originality and importance of James’s political
thought lies in its philosophical examination and transformation of the
psychic, affective, and cultural roots of American imperialism at a crucial
moment in the nation’s rise to global hegemony.

II. Pragmatism as Anti-​Authoritarianism

Alice James once described her brother William as “just like a blob of
mercury—​you can’t put a mental finger on him” (LWJ 1:289). This descrip-
tion of James’s mercurial nature has proven particularly true for schol-
ars seeking to characterize his political commitments. James has been
described alternately as a libertarian, a republican, a radical democrat, a
conservative, a socialist, an anarchist, and simply an adherent of “the gen-
teel democratic liberalism characteristic of his class and his era.”26 Some
of these labels are James’s own; others are inventions of his readers. Of
the various ideological labels that James himself came to embrace during
the final decade of his life, the one this book takes as the most revealing
for approaching his political thought is his self-​identification as an anar-
chist. “I am becoming more and more an indiv[id]ualist and anarchist,” he
confesses to William Dean Howells in the autumn of 1900, “and believe

Introduction | 7
8

in small systems of things exclusively” (C 9:362; emphasis in original).

Through his involvement in the anti-​imperialist movement, James came
into contact with anarchist writers and ideas, ranging from now-​forgotten
American figures like the Boston labor activist Morrison Swift and the
Christian pacifist Ernest Howard Crosby, to better-​known European anar-
chist writers like Leo Tolstoy, Peter Kropotkin, Pierre-​Joseph Proudhon,
and Max Stirner.27 “I am getting to be more and more of an anarchist
myself in my ideas,” he reports to Pauline Goldmark in 1903, “though
when it comes to applying them to life I am helpless” (C 10:191). He ex-
pressed “strongest sympathy” for “Tolstoi-​ anism” as “surely the best
life” to one of his anarchist interlocutors, while admitting his admiration
for Kropotkin as “the most ideal man” after reading his Memoires of a
Revolutionist (C 9:551, 451). And in his most shocking and troubling flirta-
tion with anarchism, James goes so far as to privately celebrate the assas-
sination of President William McKinley at the hands of the anarchist Leon
Czolgosz in 1901. He exclaims to Katherine Sands Godkin, “Czolgosz has
been our great deliverer! You’ve no idea how it lightens the atmosphere to
have that type of being gone!—​I mean the McK. type!” (C 10:7).
Historian Deborah Coon has carefully sorted through James’s various
confessions and citations regarding anarchism to argue that his angry re-
sponse to the Venezuela Crisis of 1895 and the “rude political awakening”
of the Spanish-​American War set him on a course of political radical-
ization.28 Over the course of the 1900s, James came to affirm “a type of
pacifist, communitarian anarchism—​strongly individualist, but holding
community to be important.”29 This anarchism valued local, decentral-
ized, and autonomous communities, those “small systems” James refers to
in his letter to Howells, as the ideal form of association to protect individu-
als from becoming reduced to “a mere series of interchangeable cogs in a
vast military-​industrial machine.”30 This emerging radicalism had a pro-
found impact on the development of James’s philosophical thinking. Seen
as an extension of his political radicalism, pragmatism’s devastating at-
tacks on dogmatism and absolutism are something more than provocative
interventions in scholarly debates concerning epistemology, empiricism,
and ethics. They are themselves anarchist tools forged to “serve as a basis
of reform and activism in the social and political world as well.”31 George
Cotkin has similarly examined how James’s encounter with anarchism and
anti-​imperialism serves as one important context, among others, for the ar-
ticulation of his public philosophy. In his vivid reconstruction of the milieu
of the Gilded Age’s cultural malaise that afflicted James and his fellow

8 | Damn Great Empires!

9

elites, Cotkin examines the shared contextual sources of both James’s

philosophy and his anti-​imperialism. “James’s philosophical expressions
of pragmatic doctrine,” he writes, “were anchored in a social and political
context.”32 Cotkin, like Coon, takes James’s self-​description as an anar-
chist seriously, but is more hesitant to take this flirtations at face value as
a statement of ideological commitment. The “anarchist edges” of James’s
thinking guard against his subscription to any particular political ideology
including Anarchism itself, spelled with a capital “A.”33
Cotkin is right to underscore this distinction between the anarchist
edges of James’s philosophy and the anarchist ideology he may or may not
have subscribed to. It is these anarchist edges that guard against any easy
classification of James’s political thought. The diversity of political labels
scholars have sought to attach to James could be grounds to conclude, as
one reader does, that “the traces of James’s political preferences are too
faint to provide more than a tentative outline of his ideas.”34 A different
conclusion one might draw from the capricious ways James’s remarks on
politics seems to cut across conventional labels, by contrast, is that there is
something unconventional and innovative about his way of thinking about
politics. Concepts, James writes in A Pluralistic Universe, are like scissors
that arrest the creative flow of experience by “cutting it up into bits” (PU
109). Conceptually arresting the pulsing flow of experience can be a help-
ful tool of inquiry, but only if we do not succumb to the typical philosoph-
ical mistake of taking immobile and neatly arranged categories for the
reality itself. “The treating of a name as excluding from the fact named what
the name’s definition fails positively to include,” is a symptom of “ ‘vicious
intellectualism’ ” (PU 32). To approach experience in its concrete and rela-
tional fullness, by contrast, you must “place yourself at the point of view
of the thing’s interior doing” (PU 117; emphasis in original). Similarly, at-
tempting to summarize James’s political thought under received labels like
“liberal” or “anarchist” risks domesticating the complexity and nuance of
his political thinking in order to satisfy intellectualist demands for concep-
tual clarity and precision. James was neither conventionally political nor
apolitical; he was, as Colin Koopman rightly argues, “political in a new
key.”35 Resisting the closure of intellectualist thinking requires cultivating
a tolerance for ambiguity, messiness, and paradox—​what James referred
to as “the vague”—​as creative elements of experience and, by extension,
political thought.36 In the place of categorizing and schematizing James’s
thought, this book seeks to study his anti-​imperialism from its “interior
doing,” so to speak, by removing James from the familiar narratives of the

Introduction | 9
10

history of American pragmatism and its well-​defined ideological coordi-

nates in order to examine his political thought in a new light.
Seen from the perspective of a contextually sensitive history of polit-
ical thought, James’s adoption of the title “anarchist” during these years
is of interest for what it might reveal about his political vision rather than
his personality or preferences. By “vision” I mean the peculiar art of
seeing, which Sheldon Wolin interprets as the characteristic of any politi-
cal theory: an articulated perspective on the world at once descriptive and
imaginative, describing it as it is and projecting possibilities as they might
be.37 As descriptive, it offers a diagnosis of authority, self, institutions,
and history as they shape a concrete present; and as imaginative, theory
proposes fanciful possibilities and exaggerations that disturb received pat-
terns of perception and introduce new modes of seeing and acting in the
world. As James tells a young scholar, the exercise of “building up an au-
thor’s meaning out of separate texts leads nowhere” unless you first grasp
“his center of vision, by an act of imagination” (LWJ 2:355; see also PU
117). It is through imaginative reconstruction of the vision embodied in his
writings, public and private, political or philosophical, that we can come to
occupy James’s political vision as a perspective for rethinking his pragma-
tism. Taking James’s Nachlass seriously reorients our own view on James
and shed new light on elements of his philosophical works that recede into
the background from the vantage point of our conventional narratives and
ways of seeing pragmatism.
Reading these anarchist confessions in terms of what they reveal about
the political vision contained in his philosophy invites a reconsideration of
the consequences of pragmatism as a practice of anti-​authoritarianism.
This is pragmatism, not as a doctrine, but as an anti-​intellectualist attitude
of orientation. As he presents it in Pragmatism, it is an “attitude of looking
away from first things, principles, ‘categories,’ supposed necessities; and
of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts” (P 32). It asks
its readers to reimagine themselves as actors in the world, rather than as
passive knowers of it, whose doings and sufferings may still hold conse-
quences for a future “still in the making” (P 123). Unlike the Cartesian
tradition, which takes the world and ideas as fixed entities to be known,
pragmatism presents the world as a contingent horizon to be remade and
places each of us as actors within the shared drama of the world’s salva-
tion. James characterizes this “alteration ‘in the seat of authority’ ” from
the world as a given to be passively represented by the mind to a project
made and remade in action as nothing short of enacting a second Protestant
Reformation (P 62). To “papal minds,” he admits, this new way of thinking

10 | Damn Great Empires!

Another random document with
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machine. Fortunately I had presence of mind enough to keep my
watch going, as well as the captain’s chronometer, for otherwise I
would have had no knowledge of the passage of time. Once or twice
the scarlet women visited the ship, but seemed nervous and wary,
and made no effort to approach or molest me, merely gazed about
as if searching for something—perhaps for me—and then retiring.
Several times, too, I ventured on deck, and peered over the ship’s
side, but saw none of the giantesses, although with the glasses I
could see crowds of the beings about the city in the distance.
“Also, I noticed among them, several individuals who were much
smaller than the rest, and who appeared to be men, although I could
not be sure. I also discovered, and almost lost my life in the
discovery, that the atmosphere of this place is unfit for human beings
to breathe, and is thick with sulphurous fumes. Close to the ground
these fumes are so dense that a person would succumb in a few
moments, but at the height of the Chiriqui’s decks, nearly seventy
feet above the rocky bed on which she rests, the air is breathable,
although it causes one to choke and cough after a few minutes. And
I am sure that the houses of these giant beings have been built on
the summits of the basalt columns in order to avoid the suffocating
fumes of the lower levels. Later, too, I learned that the membrane-
like frills upon these creatures are a sort of gills, or as I might say,
natural gas-masks, which by some means enable the beings to
breathe the sulphur-laden air. But even with these, they avoid the
lower areas where the fumes are the worst, and only visit them when
necessity arises, which accounts for my being left in peace, with
none of the horrible women near the ship, for days at a time. I
discovered the presence of the sulphur gas on the first day when,
attempting to eat, I removed my gas-mask. Suffocating as I found
the fumes, I was compelled to endure them, and gradually I became
slightly accustomed to them, so that now I have little trouble in
breathing during the short time it takes me to eat my meals. At all
other times I must wear the apparatus, and I thank God that this is
so, for I know now that it is the gas-mask which so far has preserved
my life.
“On the tenth day after my arrival I noticed a number of the
giantesses gathering about the huge, spherical airship which still
rested on its cradle near the Chiriqui, but which, I have forgotten to
state, ceased to emit its green or red lights after it had landed. Lying
there it resembled nothing so much as a gigantic can-buoy or a
floating mine, if one can imagine a buoy two hundred yards in
diameter.
“On the day I mentioned, all interests seemed to be centered on
the thing, and cautiously peering from the shelter of the deck-house,
I watched the proceedings. Presently several of the women entered
the sphere through an opening in its middle band; the aperture
closed behind them, and immediately there was a low, humming
sound as of machinery. As the sounds issued from the sphere, the
cables to which were attached the smaller spheres (which glowed
red when carrying the Chiriqui through the air) were drawn in until
the two smaller spheres were resting in recesses at the axes of the
large sphere, and where they appeared merely as hemi-spherical
projections. Then, slowly at first, but with ever increasing speed, the
slender rods about the large sphere began to move back and forth,
or rather in an oscillating manner, until they were vibrating with such
rapidity that they appeared merely rays of light. Slowly, majestically,
the immense globe rose from its cradle, and gathering headway,
leaped upward to an immense height. Then, tilting at an angle, it
passed over the city and headed for an immense pinnacle of rock,
which, fully seven miles from where I stood, reminded me of a
gigantic chimney or funnel.
“Although it was barely visible to the naked eye, I could see it
distinctly through the glasses, and I watched it with the most intense
and concentrated interest. For a few moments it remained, poised a
hundred feet or so above the pinnacle. Then, from the towering,
tapering rock, a terrific jet of steam roared forth, and striking the
great spherical machine above it, hurled it upward and beyond my
vision. Give close heed to these words, whoever may, by God’s
grace, be listening to what I say, for upon them may hinge the fate of
the human race. Only by this means, by being shot upward by this
titanic jet of steam, can the airship leave this subterranean land and
emerge through the crater by which it entered bearing the Chiriqui.
Within this place it can sail at will; once above the crater opening it
can travel anywhere, although it cannot land; but by some unknown
force or magnetic attraction or freak of gravitation the machine
cannot ascend through the crater, although, when over it, it will drop
like a plummet through the opening. And herein—for the sake of
humanity, listen to this and remember my words—lies a means of
destroying the machine, for by surrounding the crater with powerful
guns the sphere can be shelled as it emerges and utterly destroyed.
To attempt to do so as it returns to the crater would be suicidal, for
once in the outer air, it emanates vast quantities of most poisonous
gas, and all living things within a radius of several miles would be
struck down unconscious, as were my companions on the Chiriqui.
Even if gas-masks were worn, it would be most difficult to destroy
the machine as it descended, for it travels with incredible speed in its
descent and, moreover, the terrible creatures who man the thing
would see that enemies lurked near and would find some means of
destroying them, or by the mysterious magnet force they control,
would draw even the heaviest cannon to the machine as an ordinary
magnet draws needles or iron filings. So if the thing is to be
destroyed, it must be done as the machine emerges from the crater.
Would to God that I could tell where the crater is, but beyond feeling
sure it is at the summit of an Andean peak, I have no means of
locating it.
“But I was telling of what occurred on that tenth day when the
spherical airship was projected from my sight by the blast of steam.
As the machine vanished, the women who had watched its
departure, returned to their city, and I swept the landscape with my
glasses, wondering at the bleak, terrible scenery and bizarre colors.

“As I focussed the binoculars upon a level plateau, perhaps a mile

from where the Chiriqui rested, I gasped in surprise. Clearly defined,
lay the remnants of what had once been a steamship! Had I given
the matter thought, I might have known that the Chiriqui was not the
first vessel to have fallen a victim to these awful beings; but the sight
of another ship’s skeleton came to me as a terrific shock. As nearly
as I could judge, the vessel had been dismantled, for only the great
steel frame remained, with the mighty boilers and other portions of
the ship scattered about, and gruesomely like some mammoth
creature lying disemboweled upon the earth.
 “I was consumed with a mad desire to visit that pathetic wreck, but
I knew not to what dangers I would be exposed, once I left the
security of my ship. Not a being was in sight, however, and carefully I
studied the land, visually measuring the relative distances between
myself and the wreck, and between the city and the route I must
traverse. Having already observed that the giantesses moved slowly
and cumbrously on foot, I at last decided that even if they attempted
to intercept me I could regain the Chiriqui before I was overtaken, so
I threw caution to the winds and prepared to undertake my
hazardous journey. Slinging the loaded rifle on my back, with the
revolver at my belt, and still further arming myself with a keen-edged
fireaxe, I hunted up the pilot’s ladder, lowered it over the lowest side
of the ship,—which was also the side farthest from the city,—and
clambering down the Chiriqui’s lofty sides, leaped down upon the
ground. To my amazement, I landed in a dense jungle of dry, tough
vegetation which rose to my shoulders. From the deck, looking
directly downwards, I had thought this dull-green growth a short, wiry
grass, and, of course, in its relative proportion to the gigantic women,
it was no higher than ordinary grass to a normal human being. It was
a wonderful example of the theory of relativity, but my mind was not
interested in scientific matters at the time, and I merely gave thanks
that the miniature jungle,—which I saw was composed of giant
lichens—would afford me cover through which I might sneak in
safety, and with little chance of detection.
“Without much difficulty I made my way to the other vessel, and
found her even more dissected than I had supposed. Why the
denizens of the place had torn her to bits I did not then know, but
certain portions of her machinery and fittings had been left intact,
and, as I examined these, I made another and most astounding
discovery. Deeply engraved upon a brass plate was the ship’s name
‘U. S. S. Cyclops!’ For a space I stood staring, scarcely able to
believe my eyes. Here then was the solution to that mystery of the
sea, the disappearance of the collier, as laden with manganese, she
vanished without word or trace when off the Barbados during the
World War. No doubt, I thought, many a mystery of the sea had been
caused by the damnable work of these beings with their infernal
machine. But why, for what reason, did they capture ships? Why did
they carry off the unconscious persons upon the vessels? And why
did they tear the vessels apart? It was all a mystery which, in all its
horrible, gruesome, ghoulish details I was soon to solve.
“There was nothing more to be learned from the remains of the
Cyclops, and in safety I returned to the Chiriqui to find, to my
surprise and terror, that a gang of the monstrous females had
boarded the ship in my absence and were stripping her of
everything. But as they caught sight of me, all threw down whatever
they had and fled precipitately, leaving me once more in undisputed
possession of the ship. I was relieved at this, for it was obvious that I
had no need to fear the creatures. By now, too, I had formulated a
theory to account for this strange dread of a being who was a puny,
miserable thing compared to them. Unquestionably my gas-mask
rendered me a most grotesque and unknown creature in their eyes.
My remaining alive and active while all others upon the ship had
succumbed to the noxious gas had probably caused them to think
that I was a supernatural being. The fact that I could go about and
breathe the sulphur-laden air would cause them to regard me with
even greater wonder and superstition, and, as I found later, the fact
that I was never seen to eat, confirmed their belief that I was some
mysterious being against whom their gases and their deviltries were
of no avail.
“I had not much time to devote to such matters, however. Soon
after regaining the Chiriqui I heard excited cries from the land, and
looking over the ship’s rails, I found an immense crowd had gathered
near the empty cradle of the airship, and that all were gazing
upward. Following their example, I stared into the greenish void and
instantly understood. Descending rapidly towards the plain, came the
great sphere, and, suspended below it, was the hull of another
captive ship. And as I focussed my glasses upon this, I rubbed my
eyes and gaped. The dull gray color, the lines, the raking funnels, the
barbettes and gun muzzles left no room for doubt. Incredible as it
seemed, the captive vessel was a warship! What hope then had my
fellow men upon earth? What chance was there if these giant
creatures could send forth their flaming machine, and by it, capture
the fastest, most powerful war-vessels—all within the space of a few
hours?
 “Rapidly the machine and its burden approached, and presently
descended gently dropping the war vessel close to the Chiriqui. My
worst fears were confirmed. The vessel was an American destroyer,
the McCracken, and I knew that scores of my countrymen must lie
unconscious upon her, and in a few moments would be carried off to
some unknown horrible fate. What that fate was I had already
surmised. That first demonstration of the ferocious cannibalism of
the giantesses upon the Chiriqui’s deck had been enough to make
my blood run cold.
“But I had not yet guessed even a fraction of the true horror of it.
Scarcely had the McCracken been dropped upon the earth, when
the women swarmed upon her, and once more I saw the creatures
gathering the inert forms of men and carrying them to the city. And
rapidly, too, they commenced dismantling and tearing the destroyer
into bits. How they had accomplished this with the Cyclops had
puzzled me, but now I witnessed the process close at hand. From
the vicinity of the waterfall, lines or pipes were led to the vessel’s
side; presently there was the roaring sound of steam; dense clouds
of vapor arose from the cataract; the water ceased to flow, and from
the extremities of the lines or tubes twenty-foot jets of blinding flame
shot out. As easily as though made of wax, the steel sides, the
massive beams, the armored barbettes of the warship melted and
were cut by these jets, and as the pieces fell apart, the spherical
airship took a position above the vessel, and by its magnetic power,
lifted tons of the fragments, then sailing off, deposited them in some
spot beyond the city. It was then, as I saw the ship rapidly dissolving
before my eyes, that the inspiration came to me which may make it
possible for me to communicate with the outside world and may, if
God wills, serve to warn my fellow men of the fate which will
overtake them if these terrible creatures are allowed to follow out
their plans. As the jets of flame cut through the McCracken’s
superstructure, and the radio antennae fell in a tangled mass across
the deck, I forgot all else and rushed to the wireless room of the
Chiriqui. Here was my chance. If the ship’s radio transmitter was still
in working order; if the auxiliary battery was still charged, I might
send out messages which, small as the chances were, might reach
the ears of some of the countless thousands of persons who listened
each night at their receiving sets. I trembled with fear that I would
find the transmitter injured or dismantled. I shook with dread that the
battery might be dead. I felt faint with apprehension that the
message, if sent, might never penetrate the sulphur-laden
atmosphere or might never reach the outer world. And I realized,
with a sickening sinking of my heart, that even if heard my
communication might be regarded as a hoax, and no attention would
be given it. But I would do my best. The radio set had not been
molested. Everything was in working order, and I set myself the task
of transmitting my story each night at the same hour, repeating it
over and over again, until the storage batteries are exhausted, for to
get up steam and start the dynamos is beyond my powers. Had I
knowledge of Morse I would send my story by that code, but I have
not, and so—I must cease. For the love of your race and of your
dear ones listen, I beseech you, until I can resume.”

Here the message broke off abruptly, and Frank and I sat staring at
each other, fearing to speak lest we might interrupt or miss the words
which might come, and listening with straining ears at the head-sets.
For an hour we sat there and then, once more the voice spoke.
“The doom that I feared is approaching. I have been here for three
months and this will, I know, be my final message. Oh that I could
only be sure that someone has heard my words, that my fate has not
been in vain but has served to warn my fellow beings. But I must
hurry on. I have learned everything of importance. I have watched,
studied and have even learned to understand much of the language
of these beings. I found that there were men. They are puny beings
compared to the women, though ten-foot giants compared to normal
men, and they are cowed, abject, mere slaves of the females. Only
enough male children are permitted to survive to propagate the race.
All others are killed.
“As they reach manhood only those males of super-intelligence,
strength and virility are permitted to live. The others are destroyed
and—yes, horrible as it sounds, their bodies, like those of the
murdered infants and of the aged, sick or infirm, are devoured. And
as fast as the males attain middle age their lives are forfeited. Long
ago these beings subsisted upon the few wild creatures which
roamed their land; but long ago all these were exhausted and human
flesh became the only meat. There is no vegetable food, and for a
time the sacrificed surplus males, and the aged, provided food for
the race. But gradually the male births decreased, female children
preponderated, and with the increased population resulting, the
males were too few to nourish the others. Then, through what
damnable accident or design I do not know, the creatures went forth
in their airship and discovered the teeming millions of human beings
on earth.
“But the bulk of humanity was and still is safe from them, at least
until new means of attacking mankind are devised, for the globular
airship cannot approach the land. The very power it uses to lift the
greatest steamships and carry them off, draws the machine to the
earth and holds it fast. But above water, which acts as an insulator
apparently, the apparatus can operate at will. And they have a two-
fold purpose in capturing ships. All the available metal in this land
was exhausted in constructing two of the spherical machines. One of
these never returned from its first trip, and only the one remains. To
construct more, these giant women plan to use the metal salvaged
from captured ships, until a vast fleet of the infernal things is ready to
go forth and wipe the seas clean of ships and human beings. And
the bodies of the men and women, struck down by the gas, are to
serve as food for these demons in human form.
“This is the most horrible, blood-curdling thing of all. Rendered
unconscious by the gas, the victims remain in a state of suspended
animation indefinitely, exactly as do grubs, spiders and insects when
stung by certain species of wasps and placed in their nests to
provide food for their young. Stacked in great storage vaults these
breathing, living, but paralyzed human beings are kept, and as
needed, are taken out.
“Already they have a supply on hand sufficient to last them for
over a year. Some of the Cyclops company are still preserved; there
are over three hundred from the Chiriqui, hundreds from other ships,
and the entire crew of the McCracken.
“All these things I learned little by little, and mainly through a
friend, for marvelous as it may seem, I have a friend—if friend he
can be called, a miserable, trembling, terrified male, who, doomed to
death, sought to escape his fate and sought refuge with me,
dreading my presence less than his doom, and hoping that such a
feared and almost reverenced being as myself might protect him. For
two months he has been my companion, but he cannot eat anything
but meat and the supply of meat upon the ship is getting low, and
sooner or later he must succumb. And the women, maddened at his
escape from their clutches, though not yet daring to approach too
closely to me, are getting bolder. Some time, at some unguarded
moment, they will find the poor fellow alone and will fall upon him.
And in his terror, in an effort to buy his life, he will, I know, reveal to
them that I am but an ordinary mortal, a man who eats and drinks
and who survived the gas by mechanical and not supernatural
means. But I will not be taken alive by these fearful female
cannibals. When the time comes, as I know it will, I will blow my
brains out, and though they may devour my body they will not rend
me alive. No more ships have been brought in here since the
McCracken was captured. But this I know is due to the fact that all
the energies of these creatures are being devoted to building
additional air machines. This work goes on in a vast cavern beyond
the city where tremendous forces, furnaces with heat beyond human
conception and machines of which we know nothing, are controlled
by the internal steam, the radiant energy and the magnetic powers of
the earth’s core.
“And now, again let me implore any and all who may hear my
words to give close attention to what I say, for here again is a means
by which humanity may combat and destroy these ghastly, gigantic
cannibals. The spherical air-machines are helpless from above.
Their magnetic or electrical forces extend only downwards. The
gasses they throw out are heavier than air and descend but cannot
ascend, and by means of swift planes, huge bombs and machine
guns, the things can be easily destroyed. And they cannot travel
without throwing off the dazzling green light. Only when motionless
are they dark. And so they will offer easy marks and can be readily
detected. So, I beseech you who may hear, that the governments
are notified and warned and that a fleet or many fleets of airplanes
properly equipped patrol the seas, and at first sight of one of the
green meteors rise above it and utterly destroy it without mercy.
 “Wait! I hear a terrified scream.... I am back again at the
transmitter. It was the fellow who has been with me. Poor devil! He
has met his fate, but after all it was the custom of his people, and,
moreover, he would have starved to death in a few days. For that
matter I, too, face starvation. The ship’s stock is running low; all the
food upon the McCracken was destroyed in cutting up that vessel,
and unless another ship is captured I will have no food after two
weeks more. What a strange thought! How terrible an idea! That the
awful fate of hundreds of my fellows would be my salvation! But I will
never live to die from hunger. I can hear the terrible screams of my
late companion on the deck outside. God! It is the end! The fellow
must have told the enraged females. His body has been torn to
shreds. With bloody hands and reeking lips they are rushing towards
the upper deck where I sit. They are here! This is my last word! God
grant that I have been heard! I am about to⸺”
Crashing in our ears came the report of a pistol.
The End

1 The message as it came in, was halting, and interrupted, with many unintelligible
words and repetitions, as if the sender were laboring under an intense strain or was an
amateur. For the sake of clarity and continuity, the communication has been edited and
filled in, but not altered in any detail.
2 The metropolitan papers reported the meteor on the eighteenth and stated it was
observed by those on the Chiriqui on the evening of the seventeenth, but it must be
remembered that the Chiriqui was in the western Pacific and hence had gained a day
in time.

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 1927 issue of

Amazing Stories Magazine.
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