"Will the clerk quietly say, 'Yes, sir,' and go do the task?" A Message to Garcia written by Elbert Hubbard Sitting at your desk at school phasing in and out of the lesson you stare at the clock slowly tick-ticking by. You've have had a long day already and can't wait for it to be over. Then the teacher mentions a homework assignment, and you pull yourself back into consciousness. The assignment is that you must choose from one of the three books offered to read and eventually write an essay on. They range from a skinny little book to a four-hundred paged monster. What do you choose? Namely out of defiance from the majority choice for the small book, I like to choose the monster. Some choose the skinny book out of laziness, time constraints, or fear of a deep complicated mess of words to decipher. Yes, the weighty book can be the better or deeper one, but as I have come to realize the size doesn't matter. Power in books doesn't come from how many words but the words chosen. In come short stories! These stories may seem dainty little reads, but if you find the right one prepare to be blown away. This is one such story. In the Spanish-American war Cuba was a very hostile place. A message had to be sent to General Garcia who was deep in the island. This message was of the upmost importance. Except there was a problem. There was no possible way to reach him, and no one knew where he was. All hope was lost until someone mentioned a guy named Rowan. So, they called up Rowan and told him to deliver a message to Garcia, and he did. However the crazy thing is he didn't ask "where?". This incredible man did not ask any questions. He simply got the job done. The author, Elbert Hubbard published two magazines in his life, and wrote most of the articles himself. Upon hearing this story during supper he wrote an article about it in under one hour that very night. This article was written so hurriedly it did not even have a title. He was blown away by the story he had heard. "This man Rowan is a hero", he thought. In this article he examined this event. He made the point that the best worker is the person that never asks "why?" to a command, but instead just does it. Here's a variation of a scenario he describes. Say you are the boss of ten people, and one day you tell them to "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio." Will they do it, or waste fifteen minutes asking; Why? How soon do you need it? Why can't someone else do it? or Which encyclopedia? Elbert Hubbard paints this scene swearing that not one of these workers will just go quietly and get the job done. "Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?" After he published the March issue of the Philistine he got requests for more to be printed. At one point a man by the name of George H. Daniels wanted one-hundred thousand copies. Hubbard had to ask what article was causing all of this, and it was "the one about Garcia". This became the most widely distributed book during an authors lifetime. In his Apologia he writes about his astonishment on the success of A Message to Garcia. This was a hard working class man till the day he died. Trivia; Elbert Hubbard's untimely death occurred in 1915 upon the sinking of the ship Lusitania by a German torpedo, the same Lusitania that was an immediate cause for the U.S. to enter into the first World War. He tells of how the small article was circulated. Soon every soldier had a copy of it in his pocket. Not just American soldiers but Russia had this distributed to all the men in the military. Also when Russia went to war with Japan the Japanese found this book and thought it must be good so they did the same. This book became one of the most important books in armies around the world. It just makes you wonder what would have happened if he had to walk his dog during that crucial hour of writing this A Message to Garcia. The theme is the best part of the story; do your duty without question and you too can get the message to Garcia. I implore you to read this story. It is a powerful read that will take very little time. Elbert Hubbard thank you for that hour you spent writing this. I enjoyed my hour of reading it.
