On The Great Highway
By James Creelman
A Powerful Memoir
James Creelman became the first American journalist to interview the Pope, accompanied the Japanese in their war with China in Manchuria, visited Tolstoy at his home in Russia, got wounded in the Philippines as a correspondent in the Spanish-American War (he was taunting the Spanish after the Americans had seized their flag), pow-wowed with Sitting Bull, and reported on the death of President McKinley at the hands of an assassin. With the sharp, clipped writing of a master journalist, Creelman tells the story of his times, and of the part he played in that story.
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The December 17th Massacre:
In 1894 it appeared to many in the West, including war correspondent James Creelman of the newspaper The World, that Japan had booked passage on a ship of civilized nations.
 
It was a time when Japan's willingness to learn from Europe and the United States had generated admiration among Western travelers, journalists, and diplomats. The island nation famous for its samurai swords and colorful wood block prints and opened to the West by America's Admiral Perry just 40 years earlier seemed a fertile field for the plantings of Western civilization.
 
Japan's army had modernized and took pride in standing equal to the standards of weaponry and behavior proclaimed by countries such as England and Germany. By contrast, the Chinese Empire often seemed decadent, cruel, and corrupt.
 
Then came an historic test of Japan's mastery of modern military technology and Victorian standards of humane combat. War with the Chinese Empire would measure just how far Japan had come.
 
And that was when something went terribly wrong.
 
For Creelman's account of the December 17th massacre in 1894, please read his memoirs On the Great Highway, 1901, Chapter 5.)
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