Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/186

152 Southern States also upon the road of progressive development.

But we are told that the people of the slave States are a warlike race, and that they will gain by force what we are unwilling peacefully to concede. War! What a charm there is in that word for a people of colonels and generals! Well, since that old German monk invented that significant black powder, which blew the strongholds of feudalism into the air, war falls more and more under the head of the mathematical sciences. Don Quixote who, undoubtedly, would have been a hero in the ninth century, would certainly be the most egregious fool in the nineteenth. I have nothing to say about the bravery of the Southern people; for aught I care they may be braver than they pretend to be; but I invite them candidly to open their eyes like sensible men.

I will not compare the resources of the South, in men and money, with those of the North, although statistical statements would demonstrate the overwhelming superiority of the latter. We can afford to be liberal and, for argument's sake, admit that the South will equal the North in numbers; and, if they insist upon it, excel us in martial spirit. But it requires very little knowledge of military matters to understand that, aside from numbers, equipment, courage and discipline, the strength of an army consists in its ability to concentrate its forces, at all times, upon the decisive point. Providence is on the side of the big battalions, said Napoleon. That means not that victory will always be with the most numerous army, but with that which is always able to appear in strength where the decisive blow is to be struck. An army that is always scattered over a large surface is, properly speaking, no army at all. Even by a much less numerous but concentrated enemy, it will be beaten in