A biting satire of late 19th-century American imperialism, Captain Jinks, Hero was written by the American pacifist Ernest Howard Crosby . Crosby, who corresponded with Leo Tolstoy and advocated Tolstoy’s pacifist ideals in the United States, lambasts the American military and its involvement in the Spanish-American War and the Boxer Rebellion through the character of Captain Jinks, a jingoistic officer who embarks on a tragicomic quest to become a “perfect soldier.” The novel also satirizes the role of industrial and media interests in promoting war through the character of Jinks’s friend and companion Cleary, a yellow journalist who feeds sensational stories back to the home front at the behest of editors and monopolists.