Page:Addresses in Memory of Carl Schurz.pdf/30

 realize if we recall the dates of some of his great speeches. In a speech on civil service reform, delivered in the Senate in January, 1871, he laid down in the clearest and most impressive manner all the fundamental principles and objects of the reform―principles which have not yet been fully incorporated in public law―and to the close of his life he was a devoted servant of this great reform. Three years later he made two memorable speeches in the Senate on banking and against inflation of the currency, his admirable teaching being inspired not so much by his belief in the material or industrial advantages of a sound currency as by his conviction that an unsound currency caused both public and private dishonesty. The country has not yet put in practice the whole of Schurz's doctrine on honest banking and honest money. When he was Secretary of the Interior for four years he proved that he was a pioneer not only in the theory of reform, but in the practice also. The solidity of Carl Schurz's information, his independence, and his quality as a leader of thought are well illustrated by his early dealings with the subject of forestry. When he was Secretary of the Interior it was part of his business to make himself acquainted with the American forests and with the rapacious commercial organizations which were rapidly destroying them. He came into actual conflict with some of these organizations, and during his tenure of the Secretaryship he set on foot the resistance to this wanton destruction which has since gathered force and is beginning to be effective. In an admirable address delivered before the American Forestry Association in October, 1889, Carl Schurz expounded clearly and completely the true doctrine of forest protection and preservation, anticipating public opinion by many years, at a time when an advocate of such views had nothing to expect but ridicule and abuse.

The nature of the other public causes in which he labored testifies to the same virtue in him of leadership based on idealism. In his later years he became an ardent advocate of arbitration in international disputes, and hence an expounder of the atrocities of war, of its demoralizing subsequent effects, and of its frequent futility in settling disputes. In his latest years he lent the whole