" A message to Garcia"

There is a famous story about an event that supposedly took place during the Spanish-American War.  As you undoubtedly remember from your U.S. History class during high school(I am, of course, joking) the Spanish-American War was a short 10 week-long war that was fought mainly in the Caribbean and Pacific between the United States and Spain in 1898.  Cuba, at the time, was fighting a war for independence from Spain.  President William McKinley sent the USS Maine to Havana to protect American citizens and interests in Cuba at the time.  There was an explosion on board the Maine on the evening of February 15, 1898, which resulted in the death of most of the crew (250 deaths out of a total of 355 sailors and officers).  Even though the cause of the explosion was not known, the incident was blamed on the Spanish ("Remember the Maine!") and President McKinley asked for a formal declaration of war.  The 1898 Treaty of Paris gave full temporary control of Cuba, as well as the Spanish territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands to the United States.


Shortly after the USS Maine incident, the United States military sent spies to Cuba and Puerto Rico to gather military information.  1st Lt Andrew Rowan, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, was sent on a top-secret and voluntary mission to join up with General Calixto Garcia, commander of the rebel forces in eastern Cuba.  Rowan was supposed to remain in Cuba to ascertain "the strength, efficiency, movements, and general military situation."  The mission was considered highly dangerous ("suicide mission"), but was largely unsuccessful.  Rowan found Garcia after riding for several days through the Sierra Maestra Mountains.  Garcia promptly sent him back within a few hours of his arrival.


The details of Rowan's "top secret mission" were revealed (by Rowan himself) to an Associated Press correspondent named Elbert Hubbard.  Hubbard wrote a largely fictionalized account of Rowan's mission entitled "A Message to Garcia" that was highly popular and published broadly.  The essay's version of events suggested that President McKinley himself sent Rowan on the mission:


When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents.  Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastness of Cuba - no one knew where.  No mail or telegraph could reach him.  The President must secure his co-operation and quickly. 

What to do! 

Someone said to the President, "There's a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can."

The essay goes on to tell how Rowan was handed a letter to personally deliver to Garcia and did his duty with no further questions asked:


The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" 

Hubbard's point was that Rowan could have asked for additional details, such as "Where is Garcia supposed to be?" or "How am I supposed to find him?"  Instead, Rowan just did it.  He delivered the letter, no questions asked and no detailed instructions requested.  Hubbard explained further in his essay:


You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office - six clerks are within your call.  Summon any one and make this request: "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Corregio."  Will the clerk quietly say, "Yes, sir," and go do the task? [just like Rowan did, I might add].


On your life, he will not.  He will look at you out of a fishy eye, and ask one or more of the following questions:

Who was he?
Which encyclopedia?
Where is the encyclopedia?
Was I hired for that?
Don't you mean Bsmarck?
What's the matter with Charlie doing it?
What do you want to know for?

Do you get the point?  Hubbard goes on further to conclude:


By the Eternal! There is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land.  It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing - "Carry the message to Garcia!"

It all sounds great to me.  But here's the unfortunate part of the story.  It didn't happen this way at all.  President McKinley never personally requested that someone, let alone Rowan, personally deliver a note to Garcia.  He probably never even knew about the mission.  As a matter of fact, Rowan likely would have been court-martialed for disobeying his orders (remember that he left soon after his arrival) AND leaked his story to the Associated Press.  However, the essay and, as a result, Rowan were extremely popular at the time, and the authorities in the War Department felt that Rowan was too popular to be criticized, let alone be court-martialed.


Hubbard claimed that his essay had been reprinted over forty million times by the early 1900's - he was probably exaggerating a bit.  Regardless, the phrase "to carry a message to Garcia" was in common use for many years to refer to someone taking initiative when performing a difficult assignment.  For example, the 1917 Boy Scouts of America Yearbook has a passage stating that, "If you give a Boy Scout a 'message to Garcia' you know that the message will be delivered, although the mountains, the wilderness, the desert, the torrents, the broad lagoons or the sea itself, separate him from 'Garcia'."  Reportedly, the phrase can be heard in a conversation between President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the famous "White House Tapes."  The U.S. Army apparently still uses Hubbard's essay in some of their training materials for infantry officers. 


It's a good metaphor and lesson, even if not completely true.  The next time someone asks you to "Deliver a message to Garcia" - just do it.