Harper's Weekly Editorials on Carl Schurz/Mr. Schurz Commended

E have had so much to say of late in criticism of Mr. and his recent conduct that it is a pleasure to set down a word of commendation for an act of positive self-sacrifice in behalf of the public weal. Mr. resignation of the Presidency of the National Civil Service Reform Mr. Schurz commended League is the best evidence, if any were needed, of his interest in the welfare of that organization, as well as of the principles for which it stands. Any one who supposes that it was an easy thing for Mr. to do when he wrote his letter of resignation would better study the story of, who condemned his own son to death, and draw a parallel. If there has been one thing in the universe beside his temperament to which Mr. has been consistently true it is the principle of Civil Service Reform. Whether allied to the Republican party or to the Democratic, whether on the crest of the wave of success or struggling in the undertow of defeat, in the face of scorn, contempt, ridicule, in fair weather as well as in foul, he has been its ardent champion, suffering such slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in its behalf as would have overwhelmed most other men, never for once yielding up a jot of his devotion to it. He has lived it, dreamed it, breathed it &mdash; it has been the very soul of his political soul, and now be bows his head in sorrow and bids it farewell. It must be said that the nation owes a great debt to Mr. Schurz for his insistence upon its principles. It must not be forgotten in summing up the substance of Mr. career that he, with the late and, of cherished memory, more than any other men, forced its principles into the warp and woof of our public life, and the deep gratitude which is owed to him, as well as to them, must not be withheld because in his latter days he has chosen to abandon the field in which he has shone conspicuously as a patriot, in behalf of an issue which in the days of his intellectual vigor he would have been the first to make mock of.

It is an encouraging sign to those of us who have despaired over the case of this good man gone wrong that he so fully realizes the enormity of his present course that be withdraws himself from active contact with an association which his new alliance would cover with real shame and contempt. It does not mean the complete abandonment of righteous principles by Mr., as some are unkind enough to suggest. We prefer to believe it the first step of the late President of the League toward that reformation for which his best friends have been praying, the initial point of which is the realization by the offender of his own unworthiness.


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