Carl Schurz

“ We are to-day one of the greatest powers on earth, without having the most powerful fleet, and without stepping beyond our boundaries. We are sure to be by far the greatest power of all, as our homogeneous, intelligent and patriotic population multiplies, and our resources are developed, without firing a gun or sacrificing a life for the sake of conquest—far more powerful than the British Empire with all its Hindoos, and than the Russian Empire with all its Mongols. ”

“ Well, are we not ingenious and charitable enough to do much for their civilization without subjugating and ruling them by criminal aggression?
The rest of the pleas for imperialism consist mostly of those high-sounding catchwords of which a free people, when about to decide great questions, should be especially suspicious. We are admonished that it is time for us to become a “world-power.” Well, we are a world-power now, and have been one for many years. What is a world-power? A power strong enough to make its voice listened to with deference by the world whenever it chooses to speak. ”

“ The greed of speculators working upon our Government will push us from one point to another, and we shall have new conflicts on our hands, almost without knowing how we got into them. It has always been so under such circumstances, and always will be. This means more and more soldiers, ships and guns.
A singular delusion has taken hold of the minds of otherwise clear-headed men. It is that our new friendship with England will serve firmly to secure the world's peace. Nobody can hail that friendly feeling between the two nations more warmly than I do, and I fervidly hope it will last. ”

“ I call upon all who so believe never to lose heart in the struggle for this great cause, whatever odds may seem to be against us. Let there be no pusillanimous yielding while the final decision is still in the balance. Let us relax no effort in this, the greatest crisis the Republic has ever seen. Let us never cease to invoke the good sense, the honesty and the patriotic pride of the people. ”

“ We gloried in the marvelous growth of our population, wealth, power and civilization, and in the incalculable richness of the resources of our country capable of harboring three times our present population, and of immeasurable further material development. Our commerce with the world abroad, although we had no colonies, and but a small navy, spread with unprecedented rapidity, capturing one foreign market after another, not only for the products of our farms, but also for many of those of our manufacturing industries, with prospects of indefinite extension. ”

“ Accept my heartiest wishes that it may continue to prosper and flourish, sowing the good seed, and that the American youths who drink at its fountains may go forth into the world true devotees of science and truth, firm pillars of justice and right, and dauntless champions of the free institutions of government which they have inherited from their fathers, and should leave unimpaired in vigor and integrity to coming generations. ”

“ The cry suddenly raised that this great country has become too small for us is too ridiculous to demand an answer, in view of the fact that our present population may be tripled and still have ample elbow-room, with resources to support many more. But we are told that our industries are gasping for breath; that we are suffering from over-production; that our products must have new outlets, and that we need colonies and dependencies the world over to give us more markets. ”

“ What is it that has given to Washington's Farewell Address an authority that was revered by all until our recent victories made so many of us drunk with wild ambitions? Not only the prestige of Washington's name, great as that was and should ever remain. No, it was the fact that under a respectful observance of those teachings this Republic has grown from the most modest beginnings into a Union spanning this vast continent; our people have multiplied from a handful to seventy-five millions; we have risen from poverty to a wealth the sum of which the imagination can hardly grasp ”

“ It means that, as proved by the United States and Germany, colonies are not necessary for the expansion of trade, and that, as proved by Great Britain, colonies do not protect a nation against a loss of trade. Our trade expands, without colonies or big navies, because we produce certain goods better and in proportion cheaper than other people do. British trade declines, in spite of immense dependencies and the strongest navy, because it does not successfully compete with us, in that respect. Trade follows, not the flag, but the best goods for the price. ”

“ Acquisitions of that nature we might, since the slavery trouble has been allayed, make indefinitely without in any dangerous degree imperiling our great experiment of democratic institutions on the grandest scale; without putting the peace of the Republic in jeopardy, and without depriving us of the inestimable privilege of comparatively unarmed security on a compact continent which may, indeed, by an enterprising enemy, be scratched on its edges, but is, with a people like ours, virtually impregnable. ”

“ Is it necessary for a world-power, in order to be such, to have its finger in every pie? Must we have the Philippines in order to become a world-power? To ask the question is to answer it.
The American flag, we are told, whenever once raised, must never be hauled down. Certainly, every patriotic citizen will always be ready, if need be, to fight and to die under his flag wherever it may wave in justice and for the best interests of the country. ”

“ Nothing could be more natural than that, as the population pressed against its narrow boundaries, Englishmen should have swarmed all over the world, founding colonies and gradually building up an empire of possessions scattered over the globe. England now must have the most powerful fleet in the world, not only for the protection of her distant possessions but because if any other sea power, or combination of sea powers, could effectually blockade her coasts, her people, as they now are, might be starved in a few months. ”

“ And I warn the American people that a democracy cannot so deny its faith as to the vital conditions of its being—it cannot long play the King over subject populations without creating in itself ways of thinking and habits of action most dangerous to its own vitality—most dangerous especially to those classes of society which are the least powerful in the assertion, and the most helpless in the defense of their rights. ”

“ The American imperialist, whatever fine phrases he may employ, will have to say substantially this: “All you tell us about the ruinous effects of increasing armaments and the necessity of stopping them in the interest of civilization and the popular welfare is true. It was our own belief some time ago. But we Americans have recently changed our minds. You, gentlemen, say that the powers you represent would disarm if they could and that general disarmament might be possible if one power would resolutely begin to disarm. But we Americans are just beginning to arm. ”

“ Let this Republic and Great Britain each follow the course which its conditions and its history have assigned to it, and their ambitions will not clash, and their friendship be maintained for the good of all. And if our British cousins should ever get into very serious stress, American friendship may stand behind them; but then Britain would depend upon our friendship, which, as an American, I should prefer, and not America on British friendship, as our British friends, who so impatiently urge us to take the Philippines, would have it. ”

“ British friendship is a good thing to have, but, perhaps, not so good a thing to need. If we are wise we shall not put ourselves in a situation in which we shall need it. British statesmanship has sometimes shown great skill in making other nations fight its battles. This is very admirable from its point of view, but it is not so pleasant for the nations so used. I should be loath to see this Republic associated with Great Britain in apparently joint concerns as a junior partner with a minority interest, or the American Navy in the situation of a mere squadron of the British fleet. ”

“ We are now told that we have never fully lived up to that principle, and that, therefore, in our new policy we may cast it aside altogether. But I say to you that, if we are true believers in democratic government, it is our duty to move in the direction towards the full realization of that principle and not in the direction away from it. If you tell me that we cannot govern the people of those new possessions in accordance with that principle, then I answer that this is a reason why this democracy should not attempt to govern them at all. ”

“ The immutable forces of nature are against it. Whatever we may do for their improvement, the people of the Spanish Antilles will remain in overwhelming numerical predominance—Spanish Creoles and negroes, and the people of the Philippines, Filipinos, Malays, Tagals and so on—some of them quite clever in their way, but the vast majority utterly alien to us, not only in origin and language, but in habits, traditions, ways of thinking, principles, ambitions—in short, in most things that are of the greatest importance in human intercourse and especially in political coöperation. ”

“ And yet, this is substantially what the true friends of America, and what her enemies in Europe, think—I mean those friends who had faith in the nobility of the American people, who loved our republican government and who hoped that the example set by our great democracy would be an inspiration to those struggling for liberty the world over; and I mean those enemies who hate republican government and who long to see the American people disgraced and humiliated. ”

“ And so with all the blood-crossings caused by the motley immigration, we became a substantially homogeneous people, united by common political beliefs and ideals, by common interests, laws and aspirations—in one word, a nation. Indeed, we were not without our difficulties and embarrassments, but only one of them, the race antagonism between the negroes and the whites, especially where the negroes live in mass, presents a problem which so far has baffled all efforts at practical solution in harmony with the spirit of our free institutions, and thus threatens complications of a grave character. ”

“ The Filipinos fought against Spain for their freedom and independence, and unless they abandon their recently proclaimed purpose for their freedom and independence, they will fight against us. To be sure, we promise them all sorts of good things if they will consent to become our subjects. But they may, and probably will, prefer independence to foreign rule, no matter what fair promises the foreign invader makes. For to the Filipinos the American is essentially a foreigner, more foreign in some respects than even the Spaniard was. Subjection to foreign rule is not to everybody's taste ”

“ But it must not be forgotten that this machinery was evolved from a century of rapine, corruption, disastrous blunders, savage struggles and murderous revolts, and that even now many wise men in England gravely doubt in their hearts whether it was best for the country to undertake the conquest of India at all, and are troubled by gloomy forebodings of a calamitous catastrophe that may some day engulf that splendid fabric of Asiatic dominion. ”

“ We shall have done our duty to them, to ourselves and to the world. However imperfect their governments may still remain, they will at least be their own, and they will not with their disorders and corruptions contaminate our institutions, the integrity of which is not only to ourselves, but to liberty-loving mankind, the most important concern of all. ”

“ If this democracy, after all the intoxication of triumph in war, conscientiously remembers its professions and pledges, and soberly reflects on its duties to itself and others, and then deliberately resists the temptation of conquest, it will achieve the grandest triumph of the democratic idea that history knows of. ”

“ No, we cannot expect that the Porto Ricans, the Cubans and the Filipinos will maintain orderly governments in Anglo-Saxon fashion. But they may succeed in establishing a tolerable order of things in their fashion, as Mexico, after many decades of turbulent disorder, succeeded at last, under Porfirio Diaz, in having a strong and orderly government of her kind, not, indeed, such a government as we would tolerate in this Union, but a government answering Mexican character and interests, and respectable in its relations with the outside world. ”

“ We had invited the oppressed of all nations to find shelter here, and to enjoy with us the blessings of free institutions. They came by the millions. Some were not as welcome as others, but, under the assimilating force of American life in our temperate climate, which stimulates the working energies, nurses the spirit of orderly freedom and thus favors the growth of democracies, they became good Americans, most in the first generation, all in the following generations. ”