Carl Schurz

“ As has been said of the army-and-navy-ridden countries of Europe, every American worker, when at his toil, will have to carry a soldier or sailor on his back. There will be glorious chances for speculative adventure to accumulate colossal fortunes, huge corruption funds and no end of spoil for the politicians and grinding taxation for the people who have to pay the bills.
Meanwhile, by turning the war advertised so loudly as a war of liberation and humanity into a war of conquest, a land-grabbing foray, the American democracy will have lost its honor. ”

“ It will have given “the government of the people, by the people, for the people" the greatest triumph in its history. It will have commended republican government and democratic institutions to the respect and confidence of mankind as they have never been commended before. It will thus have gloriously recognized its responsibility and served its mission as the great republican power of the world. There will be no prouder title than that of being an American—far prouder than the most powerful and costly armaments and the largest conquests can make it. ”

“ In other words, it is the first and highest duty of the American people, involving their first and gravest responsibility, so to conduct their foreign as well as their domestic concerns that the problem of democratic government on a large scale be successfully solved in this Republic, not only for the benefit of the inhabitants of this country alone, but for the benefit of mankind. If the American people fail in this, they will fail in discharging their gravest responsibility and in fulfilling their highest mission, whatever else they may accomplish. ”

“ Now contemplate, on the other hand, that which is not merely possible, but certain to follow if the Republic remains true to itself, its responsibility and its mission. The war with Spain is carried to a successful issue. In concluding peace the victorious Republic keeps in clear view its solemn declaration and promise that this was to be a war of liberation and humanity, and not of conquest. Firmly discountenancing the thought of annexing any of the conquered countries, it makes the best attainable arrangements to secure the liberated populations in their rights and welfare. ”

“ Having conscientiously resisted all temptations of territorial aggrandizement in the hour of triumph, and having proved itself absolutely faithful to its word against the most seductive promptings of ambition, it will enjoy the respect of mankind in a far higher degree than ever before. It will have silenced forever its detractors who accused it of hypocrisy and impure motives. The American sister republics will look up to it with renewed and absolute confidence in the sincerity of its professions, and gladly recognize its primacy in this hemisphere. ”

“ It never has failed, as history proves. Recovery from this sort of corruption, which in a monarchy or an aristocracy is not easy, is therefore far more difficult in a democracy. Owing to its constitutional peculiarity, a democracy is far less capable of enduring and of overcoming wide-spread and deep-seated corruption than is a monarchy or an aristocracy.
But suppose we are sanguine and call this not a certainty, but only a danger, what reason have the American people for exposing themselves to a danger so awful? ”

“ When we are asked whether a nation should, in this respect, do nothing for the outside world because it cannot do all, or because it is not perfect itself, the answer is that to be true to its responsibility and its duty, a nation should conscientiously seek to ascertain for itself how it can make its conduct most useful, morally as well as materially, to its own members as well as generally to mankind, and then devote its energies to the task of reaching the highest possible degree of that usefulness. ”

“ A monarchy or an aristocracy can govern subject populations—it sometimes does it badly, sometimes well—in perfect harmony with its reasons of being, without going beyond the vital conditions of its existence. In doing so it exercises a function suited to its nature. But it cannot institute and maintain among its people complete self-government on the basis of equal rights without breaking itself down. A democracy can maintain complete self-government on the basis of equal rights, for that is its natural function ”

“ To be just to their highest responsibility and duty, the American people should therefore avoid as much as possible everything, however splendid it may appear, and however flattering it may be to their ambition, that may be apt to make their democratic government at home less honest, less just, less beneficent and thereby less respectable and less attractive in the eyes of the world. ”

“ Critical observation of the goings on in the United States and in the French Republic has of late years seriously shaken what there was of popular belief that republican government was necessarily the most honest and economical and the wisest imaginable government. But mankind still did believe— especially judging from the fact that the United States, with all their wealth and strength, did not find it necessary to keep up any large armament—that republican government was by its natural tendency a guaranty of peace. ”

“ Our American sister republics will, after so glaring a breach of faith, be alarmed for their own safety, feeling themselves threatened by the unscrupulous and grasping ambition of the American people, and become the open or secret enemies of the United States, ready to intrigue against this Republic with European powers—a source of more warlike troubles. ”

“ How far such mischief will be wrought by our war with Spain will depend upon its duration, upon the extent to which it withdraws popular attention from our home concerns, and upon its results as to the future policy of the United States. However justifiable and even praiseworthy this war may appear to us, it is useless to deny that the mere fact of the great American Republic having gone to war without absolutely evident and generally accepted necessity, has hurt the prestige of democratic government in an important respect. ”

“ THE settlement of the results of the war with Spain imposes upon the American people the momentous duty of determining whether they will continue the traditional policy under which they have achieved their present prosperity, greatness and power, or whether they will adopt a new course, the issue of which is, to say the least, highly problematical, and which, if once entered upon, can, according to all human foresight, never be retraced. ”

“ The peculiar responsibility resting upon the American people cannot be more strikingly and impressively defined than it was by Abraham Lincoln in his famous Gettysburg speech:
Our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ”

“ Greedy speculation will inevitably seek to seize upon those new possessions, and as inevitably invade the politics of the whole country with its corrupting influence. That spirit of speculation will strive to push the Republic into new adventures, and, the United States being then entangled in the jealousies and quarrels of the Old-World powers, and in the struggles for colonial acquisition, new wars will be threatening. Very large armies and navies will be needed to maintain what has been won by conquest and to win more. ”

“ The American people may well pause before accepting a counsel which, in seeking to unload upon Providence the responsibility for schemes of reckless ambition involving a palpable breach of faith, falls little short of downright blasphemy. ”

“ Various voices have reached us from that part of the world, informing us that many thinking men among the Spanish-Americans see in our war against Spain only the first step in the execution of a vast scheme of conquest embracing first the Spanish West Indies, then all the other adjacent islands that can be got, then Mexico and the other republics down to the inter-oceanic canal that is to be built and a sufficient stretch of land south of that canal to bring it well within the boundaries of the United States, and then nobody knows what more. ”

“ But if the imperial policy prevails, and all those countries, with their populations, are annexed, there will be for the first time in the history of the Republic, large territories inhabited by many millions of people who, with few exceptions, all belong to one church, and who, if they become a political force, may cause conflicts of influences from which the American people have so far been happily exempt. ”

“ But while we have to some extent—by no means altogether—recovered during thirty-three years of peace from the mischief done by four years of war, how would it be if, instead of a long period of peace intervening, wars had multiplied during that time, continually withdrawing the attention of the citizens from their home concerns by the exciting reports of campaigns and battles, thus continually paralyzing that vigilance which is “the price of liberty,” and giving no end of opportunity to the political jobber and the demagogue? ”

“ Never having enough, their greed constantly grasping for more, they will seek to drive this country into new enterprises of conquest. Opportunities will not be lacking when this Republic is once in the race for colonial acquisitions in which the European Powers are now engaged, and which keeps them incessantly increasing their expensive armaments. And the more such enterprises there are, the greater will be the danger of new wars, with all their demoralizing effects upon our democratic government. ”

“ Imagine, then, the United States to cover that part of America here described, and, in addition, Hawaii, the Philippines and perhaps the Carolines and the Ladrones, and what not,—immense territories inhabited by white people of Spanish descent, by Indians, negroes, mixed Spanish and Indians, mixed Spanish and negroes, Hawaiians, Hawaiian mixed blood, Spanish Filipinos, Malays, Tagals, various kinds of savages and half-savages, not to mention the Chinese and Japanese—at least twenty-five millions in all and all of them animated with the instincts, impulses and passions bred by the tropical sun ”

“ Only Cuba was mentioned in the resolution, because only Cuba could be mentioned. To say that we may, without breaking the pledge involved in our proclamation, take and keep Porto Rico or the Philippines because they were not mentioned by name in the resolution, while it was in the nature of things that they could not be so mentioned—would this not be a mean piece of pettifogging to cover up a breach of faith? Can a gentleman do such things? Can a gentleman quibble about his moral obligations and his word? ”

“ Having set an unsurpassed example of uprightness and magnanimity in the exercise of great and victorious power, its voice will be listened to in the councils of nations with more than ordinary deference; and although international arrangements are seldom governed by sentimental reasons, a nation so strong and at the same time so just and generous will easily obtain all the accommodations for its commerce it can decently claim. ”

“ The farther away those subject countries are from close public observation, the richer and more tempting their natural resources, the more unfit their populations for self-government and the more pronounced the race antagonisms, the more unrestrained will be the cupidity of the governing race, the less respect will there be for the rights and interests of the subject races and the more unscrupulous and rapacious the rule over them—and this in spite of laws for their protection which may be fair on their face and well intended in their meaning. ”

“ There has been much complaint of the influence wielded in our Government by rich and powerful corporations such as the Sugar Trust. The more or less arbitrary control exercised by our Government over distant countries with great resources will inevitably stimulate the multiplication of speculative enterprises with much money behind them, subjecting the Government in all its branches to constant pressure and manipulation which cannot fail to produce a most baneful effect upon our politics. ”

“ A little sober reflection will convince every thinking mind that the first step on our part in this new policy of conquest will be very apt to fill the minds of our southern neighbors with that vague dread of some great danger hanging over them which will turn them into secret or open enemies of the United States, capable of throwing themselves into anybody's arms for protection ”